Transcriber’s Notes
Text printed in italics has been transcribed between _underscores_,
text printed in Fraktur has been transcribed between ~tildes~. Small
capitals have been replaced with ALL CAPITALS.
More Transcriber’s Notes may be found at the end of this text.
THE
RURAL LIFE OF ENGLAND.
BY
WILLIAM HOWITT,
AUTHOR OF THE “BOOK OF THE SEASONS,” ETC.
[Illustration]
SECOND EDITION, CORRECTED AND REVISED.
WITH
ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD BY BEWICK AND S. WILLIAMS.
LONDON:
LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS.
1840.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY MANNING AND MASON,
IVY-LANE, ST. PAUL’S.
Preparing for Publication, in One Volume, 8vo.
THE BALLAD POETRY OF MRS. HOWITT.
To be beautifully embellished with Wood Engravings from original
Designs.
TO
THOMAS AND PHEBE HOWITT,
OF HEANOR, IN THE COUNTY OF DERBY.
MY DEAR PARENTS,
There are no living persons to whom this Volume can be with so much
propriety inscribed as to you. To you my heart desires to present some
visible token of that affection and gratitude which animate it in
reviewing all the good it has derived from you. It was to your
inculcations, but far more to the spirit of your daily life,--to the
purity, integrity, independent feeling, and simple religion,--in fact,
to the pervading and perpetual atmosphere of your house, that I owe
every thing which has directed me onward in life: scorning whatever is
mean; aspiring after whatever is generous and noble; loving the poor and
the weak, and fearless of the strong; in a word, every thing which has
not only prolonged life but blessed and sanctified it. Following your
counsels and example, I have striven not so much for wealth as for an
independent spirit and a pure conscience. Do I not owe you much for
these? But besides this, it was under your roof that I passed a
childhood and youth the happiest that ever were passed; it was there
that I imbibed that love of nature, which must live though it cannot die
with me. But beyond this, the present volume is descriptive of that
rural life, to which your ancestors for many generations, and yourselves
to an honourable old age, have been invariably and deeply attached. To
you, therefore, for these and a thousand other kindred reasons,
THE PRESENT VOLUME IS INSCRIBED,
BY YOUR AFFECTIONATE SON,
THE AUTHOR.
O, dear Britain! O my mother isle!
Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy
To me, a son, a brother, and a friend,
A husband, and a father! who revere
All bonds of natural love, and find them all
Within the limits of thy rocky shores.
O native Britain! O my mother isle!
How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy
To me, who from thy lakes and mountain rills,
Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,
Have drank in all my intellectual life,
All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
All adoration of the God in nature,
All lovely and all honourable things,
Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
The joys and greatness of its future being.
There lives not form nor feeling in my soul
Unborrowed from my country. O divine
And beauteous island! thou hast been my sole
And most magnificent temple, in the which
I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,
Loving the God who made me.
_Coleridge._
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
The kind and most cordial greeting which this work has received from the
public, and by which a very large impression has been speedily
exhausted, demands a prompt and grateful acknowledgement. After all, the
highest gratification which an author can derive from his writings,
next to the persuasion that he has effected some good to his
fellow-creatures, is felt in the generous echo of his own sentiments,
which reaches him from the amiable and intelligent of his countrymen and
countrywomen, on all sides and of every class, and in the nearer
sympathy and communication into which he is brought with such minds.
With respect to the opinions of the Press, there is one fact connected
with this work which I state with peculiar gratification, because it
does honour to human nature,--and that is, that the very warmest
approbation has been, in the greater number of instances, bestowed upon
it by those critics to whom the author is most decidedly opposed in
political opinion. I cannot, either, refrain from observing, that though
I did hope to find a quick response in the hearts of Englishmen on a
subject in which both the author and his countrymen are alike so deeply
interested, I could not anticipate the delight which Americans have
manifested in it; and I must take this opportunity, as it is the only
one afforded me, to express my sense of the interesting letter of “An
American Lady--a stranger in this country,” with a copy of Bryant’s
Poems.
Many evidences of the interest felt in this work by my English readers,
known and unknown, and of the benefit thence derived to the work by most
valuable corrections and novel information, will become apparent in the
progress of perusal.
I have only to add, chiefly from the preface to the former edition, that
my object in this volume has been to present to the reader a view of the
Rural Life of England at the present period, as seen in all classes and
all parts of the country. For this purpose I have not merely depended
upon my acquaintance with rural life, which has been that of a great
portion of my own life from boyhood, but I have literally travelled, and
a great deal of it on foot, from the Land’s-End to the Tweed,
penetrating into the retirements, and witnessing the domestic life of
the country in primitive seclusions and under rustic roofs. If the
mountains and valleys, the fair plains and sea-coasts, the halls and
farm-houses, the granges, and cottages of shepherds, miners, peasants,
or fishermen, be visited in this volume with a tenth part of the
enjoyment with which I have visited them in their reality, it must be a
delightful book indeed; for no moments of my existence have been more
deliciously spent, than those in which I have wandered from spot to spot
of this happy and beautiful island, surveying its ancient monuments, and
its present living men and manners.
The embellishments of this volume are both designed and engraved by
Samuel Williams: the only exceptions being, that I am indebted to our
accomplished friend the late Miss Twamley of Birmingham, now Mrs.
Meredith, of Australia, for the sketch on the title-page; for those of
the Charcoal-burner’s Hut, and Morgan Lewis’s last View of the Fairies,
to our excellent young friend Miss Tregellis, of Neath Abbey; that of
Purkiss’s Hut, New Forest, to Mrs. Southey; and to the amiable family of
the late FATHER OF MODERN WOOD-ENGRAVING--the unrivalled THOMAS BEWICK,
for the Otter-Hunt, at page 302, and the Street-Scene at page 324 of
this work, left at his death by that eminent artist unpublished. Both
pieces will be found characteristic of the hand from which they come;
and the Street-Scene, in particular, is full of those happy satirical
sallies which give such piquancy to many of his productions.
W. H.
_West-end Cottage, Esher, Surrey,
April 16th, 1840._
LIST OF EMBELLISHMENTS.
Page
1. Vignette: Summer-house, near Claremont Title
2. Old English Hall 1
3. Grouse-Shooting in the Highlands 29
4. Oxen Ploughing 58
5. A Garden Scene 67
6. The Solitary House 139
7. Cattle in the Shade 164
8. Sir Roger de Coverley and the Gipsies 165
9. Ladies personating Gipsies 195
10. Daleswomen going to a Shout 221
11. Old Dalesman and Traveller 248
12. Figures on a Screen in Annesley Hall 286
13. The Otter Hunt, by Bewick 302
14. Classical Rural Scenes 305
15. Scene in a Town Street, by Bewick 324
16. Wild Horses in New Forest 366
17. Purkiss’s Cottage, New Forest 376
18. Charcoal-burners’ Hut 379
19. Wild English Cattle in Chillingham Park 395
20. Woman driving Geese 431
21. Procession of Village Maidens at Whitsuntide 444
22. Morgan Lewis shewing the last haunt of the Fairies 479
23. The Village Inn 480
24. A Sea Scene 502
25. A Donkey Race 515
26. Bird-catching 573
27. Tickling Trout 615
CONTENTS.
PART I.
LIFE OF THE ARISTOCRACY.
CHAPTER I.
Page
Pre-eminence of England as a Place of Country Residence -- Its
Political and Moral Position -- the Conveniences conferred by the
Perfection of the Arts on Social Life -- Its Literature, Spirit of
Freedom, Religious Feeling, and Philanthropic Institutions -- the
Delightfulness of its Country Residences; with its Parks, Lawns,
Woods, Gardens, etc. -- the Variety of Scenery in a small compass
-- Advantages of its Climate, notwithstanding all just cause of
complaint -- Its Soil sanctified by Noble Deeds, and Intellectual
Renown -- Real Superiority of England as a Place of Residence;
shewn by its Effects on Foreigners -- Willis’s Description of its
Effect on him 1
CHAPTER II.
Enviable Position of the English Country Gentleman as regards all
the Pleasures and Advantages of Life -- every Art and Energy
exerted in his Favour -- by them his House surrounded with
Delights -- the News and the Luxuries of the World brought to his
Table -- Books, Music, Paintings at his command -- Farming,
Gardening, Planting, Field-sports all within his grasp -- Scenes
which offer themselves to extend his Pleasures -- the Service of
his Country open to him -- Facilities for Travel -- Pursuits and
Pleasures afforded by Country Life to Ladies 10
CHAPTER III.
Life of the Gentry in the Country -- Effect of the Annual Visit of
the Aristocracy to Town -- Pleasure of re-assembling at their
Country Houses -- Impressions of our Country Houses and Country
Life on Foreigners -- the German Prince’s Description of the Dairy
at Woburn Abbey -- Willis’s Description of the Mode of Life at
Gordon Castle -- The peculiar Charms of this kind of Life 18
CHAPTER IV.
Routine of Country Sports -- Hunting, Shooting, Coursing, pursued
in a different Style to that of our Ancestors -- each its own
Season, Apparatus, and Appointments -- English Sportsmen
communicate their Knowledge through the Press -- the Extinction
of Falconry -- the Perfection of Fox-hunting in this Country --
Manner in which some Old Sportsmen amuse themselves during the
Summer -- Favour into which Angling has risen of late years -- our
Tourist-Anglers -- Grouse-Shooting: its exciting Nature --
Symptoms of the approach of 12th of August in England, the same as
exhibited in Scotland -- Sportsmen on their way to the Highlands
by the Packet -- the Contrast between them and Pedestrianizing
Students -- Tom Oakleigh’s Description of the Commencement of
Grouse-Shooting on the Moors -- other Features of it, both there
and in Scotland -- Return from Partridge-Shooting -- a Word with
the Too-Sensitive 29
CHAPTER V.
Scientific Farming: Its State, Implements, and Admirers, Ancient
and Modern -- Agricultural Pursuits delighted in by the greatest
Men of all Ages -- Attachment of the Roman Nobility to them --
Cicero’s enthusiastic Encomiums on Country Affairs -- Farming now
practised as a Science -- Vast Improvements during the last
Century -- Multiplicity of its Modern Implements -- Benefits
derived from Chemistry and Mechanics -- Progressive Improvements
in Tillage, Breed of Cattle, Wool, Machinery, etc. by Tull,
Menzies, Bakewell, Lord Somerville, Coke, Duke of Bedford, the
Culleys, etc. -- by Periodicals and Associations -- Men to whom
Agricultural Interests are peculiarly Indebted -- Characters of
the Duke of Buccleugh and Lord Somerville, by Sir Walter Scott --
Anecdote of the Duke of Portland 49
CHAPTER VI.
Planting: Its Pleasures -- Vast Effect of the Writings of Evelyn
in England, and Dr. Johnson in Scotland -- Evidences of the Growth
of the Planting Spirit in all Parts of the Kingdom -- Wordsworth’s
Complaint of the Larch in the Lake Country -- Larch Plantations of
the Duke of Athol -- His calculated Profits -- Monteith of
Stirling’s Calculations of the Profits of 100 Acres of Oak
Planting in seventy years -- Anecdote of an extensive Planter 59
CHAPTER VII.
Gardens -- Pleasures of them -- Retrospective View of English
Gardens -- Influence of our Imaginative Writers on their Character
-- Writers before the Reign of Elizabeth -- the Roman Style of
Gardens under the name of Italian, French and Dutch Gardens,
prevalent till the 18th Century, overturned by the Writings of
Addison, Pope, and Walpole, and by the Works of Bridgman, Kent,
and Brown -- Gardens of Hampton Court, Nonsuch, Theobalds, etc.,
as described by Hentzner in 1598 -- the Old Style of Gardens
appropriate to the Old Houses and the Character of the Times --
Advantages of the Prevalence of different Tastes at different
Periods pointed out -- Laborious Lives and Travels of our earlier
Gardeners and Botanists -- our Old Gardens interesting objects in
different parts of the Kingdom -- their Classical Antiquity
pleaded in their favour 67
CHAPTER VIII.
Country Excitements -- Diminution of the Enjoyment of Country Life
by Petty Rivalries and Jealousies; and by the Neglect of Walking
-- Racing a great cause of excitement to the Gentry in the Country
-- the Present State of the Turf, as shewn by Nimrod -- Variety
afforded by Race and Country Balls, Musical Festivals, etc. --
Confirmation -- Parade of Assize Time -- the Sheriff’s Pageant 77
PART II.
LIFE OF THE AGRICULTURAL POPULATION.
CHAPTER I.
The English Farmer: his Character, and Mode of Life -- Picture of
the approach to a Market-Town on a Market-Day -- Farmers going in
and coming out -- Contrast between the Space occupied by the
Concerns of the Farmer and the City Trader -- Enviable Aspect of
the Farmer’s Abode -- his Life and Soul in his Profession -- his
Conversation -- a great Charm in Nature working with him --
Delight which Poets and Great Men have found in Farming -- the
Intellectual Grade of the Farmer -- Pressing Hospitalities of
Farmers and their Wives -- a Sketch of one Day’s Feasting at a
Farm-House -- Dinner, and its chaos of Good Things -- Tea, and the
arrival of Fresh Guests -- who they are -- Traits of Character
both of Men and Women of this Class -- the Dance, and the
Departure 87
CHAPTER II.
The English Farmer as operated upon by Modern Circumstances --
Complaint of Cobbett that the Farmer is spoiled by Modern
Refinement -- In what Degree this is true -- Men of all Ranks to
be found amongst Farmers -- the Old Farmer in retired Parts of
England as Rustic as ever -- Effects of Political Economy -- Evils
of the Large Farm System -- the Farmer in a Healthy State of the
Country -- Drawbacks on the Pleasantness of Farm Houses -- the
Remedy easy -- Advantages and Disadvantages of Large Farms stated
-- Instance of the Success of a Small Farmer, and its obvious
Causes -- Just Equilibrium of Interests, an open field for
Enterprise necessary to National Prosperity 99
CHAPTER III.
Farm-Servants, and their Mode of Life -- a Peak-of-Derbyshireman’s
Address to his Guest -- the Plodding Farmer and his Wife -- the
Journal of a Farmer’s Day, by Mr. Robinson of Cambridge -- Mode in
which Farm-Servants, both Men and Women, are brought up --
Ordinary Course of the Farmer-Man’s Life -- the same in Harvest --
Sketch of him as preparing for Plough, or for the Team -- Custom
of going out with the Wagon to deliver Corn, etc. -- Anecdote of a
“Statesman’s” Wife in Cumberland 107
CHAPTER IV.
The Bondage System of the North of England -- Manner in which it
strikes a Stranger from the South -- Bands of Women working in the
Fields -- Mode of Maintaining the Hinds -- Description of their
Cottages -- Cottage of the Herd of Middleton -- Cobbett’s Surprise
on discovering the Bondage System -- his View of its Effects on
the Population and Productiveness of the Country -- Curious Coach
Scene near Morpeth -- Cobbett’s Address to the Chopsticks of the
South on the State of the Bondage District -- Bondage Farms and
Farm-yards -- Lodgings of the Hinds -- their Allowance of Corn and
Pease -- the Schoolmaster paid in Meal -- Precarious Nature of the
Tenure of their Houses -- Enormous Rent of the Land -- the
Farm-yards, Corn Factories -- Scantiness of the Population
compared with the Agricultural Districts of the South -- Hardships
of the System on the Hinds -- a Certificate required from the last
Master -- the same Custom in the Collieries of the Midland
Counties -- Statements of Mr. and Mrs. Grey, Mr. Dodds, etc. --
Concluding Remarks 119
CHAPTER V.
The Terrors of a Solitary House -- Sense of Insecurity which a
Townsman feels in a Solitary House at Night -- Wide Difference in
our Feeling of such a Place by Day and by Night -- Nervous Fancies
excited by them on Stormy Nights -- Decrease of Burglaries and
Highway Robberies through Modern Improvements -- Noble Defence of
his House by Colonel Purcell -- Attack of the House of a Welsh
Gentleman, Mr. Powell, and his Murder -- Fact related by a
Minister of the Society of Friends -- Sturdy Rogues -- Fright of
an Old Gentleman with one -- Cowardice inspired by living in a
Solitary House -- Superstitions generated by such Places --
Concluding Remarks 139
CHAPTER VI.
Midsummer in the Fields -- the Spiritual Effect of Green Fields at
Midsummer -- True Wisdom of Izaak Walton -- Delicious Haunts of
the Angler at this Season -- Profound Repose of Trees -- Rich
Mosaic of Fields -- Sound of Birds at this Season -- Mowers at
work -- Delights of Brooksides, with their Plants and Insects --
Curious Metamorphosis of Midges -- Beauty of Dragon-flies --
Summer Birds -- Feelings connected with this fleeting Season 159
PART III.
PICTURESQUE AND MORAL FEATURES OF THE COUNTRY.
CHAPTER I.
Gipsies: their History and present State -- Gipsies Part and
Parcel of the English Landscape -- an essential Portion of our
Poetry and Literature -- Uses made of them by many kinds of
Writers -- Gipsy Adventure of Sir Roger de Coverley -- Gipsy
Sketches by Wordsworth, Cowper, Crabbe, and others -- Inquiries
after their Origin -- the Notion of the Ettrick Shepherd of it --
Arab-like Character of Gipsies -- Researches of Grellman and
Buttner into the Gipsy Origin -- Account of their Numbers,
Treatment, and Habits in all Nations -- their Language -- various
Names by which they are and have been known -- M. Hasse’s Theory
of their Antiquity -- pointed out by Herodotus and Strabo --
Causes of their more numerous Appearance in Western Europe about
the year 1400 -- their first entry into France in 1427, as
described by Pasquin -- Banished by Proclamation -- the same
Policy pursued in other Countries -- Cruelties practised on them
in Spain -- Order to drive them from France with Fire and Sword --
Attempt to expel them from Sweden, Denmark, Italy, and England --
Entry respecting them in the Parish Records of Uttoxeter -- the
Inquiries of Mr. Hoyland into their History and Condition -- his
Visits to their Haunts at Norwood and London -- their Annual
Progresses from London through various Counties -- Mr. Hoyland’s
Researches in Scotland -- the Border-Country their chief Resort --
Letter of Sir Walter Scott respecting them -- Remarkable Scene
with them at Riding the Marches near Yetholm -- Sir Walter Scott’s
recognition of one of them at Kelso Fair -- the Family of the Faas
-- Old Will Faa, the Gipsy King’s Journey to see the Laird on his
Death-bed -- Meg Merrilies one of their Clan -- the Author’s Visit
to Yetholm -- the Gipsy Houses -- the Feud between them and the
Shepherds -- Old Will Faa, the present King -- the Importance
given him by Sir Walter Scott’s Writings -- his Smuggling and
Fighting -- his Portrait by Sir Martin Arthur Shee -- General
Review of their Numbers and Condition in these Kingdoms -- Camp
near Nottingham, and Death of the Gipsy King -- Peculiarities of
the whole Race -- their estimated Numbers in Europe -- Children
sent to School in London -- Gipsy Wife reading her Bible to her
Children -- Feelings naturally presented by the sight of a Gang --
Gipsies of New Forest -- Exertions of Mr. Crabbe and the Home
Missionary Society -- Gipsies’ Advocate published -- Mrs.
Southey’s Account of the New Forest Gipsies, and particularly the
Stanley family -- Anecdote of George III. and the dying Gipsy --
Curious Accidental Meeting of the Author with two Ladies of Rank
acting the Gipsies in Surrey 165
CHAPTER II.
Nooks of the World, or a Peep into the Back Settlements of England
-- Beauty and Repose of many such Places to the eye -- their
Intellectual Slumber -- Wordsworth’s Description of a Farmer-lad
-- the Books generally to be found in primitive Cottages -- Worst
State of Morals in Districts partly Agricultural and partly
Manufacturing -- Exertions of the Methodists -- the Effect of
Political Pressure on the Working Class -- Necessity of sound
Education -- the Effect of it in Scotland -- Rural Book Societies
recommended -- An Example of the Effect of Reading on a Working
Man -- Sordid Character of the People of some Property in obscure
Hamlets -- A Physician living in a Dove-Cote -- Sketch of a
Country Proprietor and his Family -- the Farmer Brothers -- the
Land Agent’s account of a curious Dinner Scene at the Squire’s --
a worthy Example of the Old School of Country Gentlemen --
Education the great need of the Rural Districts 196
CHAPTER III.
Nooks of the World: Part II. -- Life in the Dales of Lancashire
and Yorkshire -- Wide Contrast between the Aspect and Condition of
the Agricultural and Manufacturing Districts -- Poverty and
Rudeness of some Parts of Lancashire -- Half-wild Children in the
Lancashire Hills -- Old Factory System -- Wild Country between
Lancashire and the Yorkshire Dales -- General Character of the
Dales -- Primitive Simplicity of the People -- Formerly much
visited by George Fox -- a Friend’s Meeting -- Dent Dale --
Singular Appearance of the Bed of the River Dent -- Rural
Occupation and Vehicles -- Population of a Dale divided into
little Communities -- Customs at a Birth -- Knitting Parties --
Knitting Songs -- other Particulars of their Knitting Habits --
Instances of Eccentricities of Character -- Dislike of Factories
-- Every Person and House has its Name -- Singular Story of
Deception practised on a rich Widow -- Peculiar Customs of the
Dales -- their Hospitality 221
CHAPTER IV.
Old English Houses -- General Impression of them -- the strong
Historic Interest connected with them -- a delightful Record of
such Abodes might be written -- Feelings that arise in passing
through them -- their various Styles, Furniture, Pictures,
Tapestry, and Arms, Memorials of the Changes of National Power and
Manners -- Passages of most Tragical Interest indicated by many of
our Family Pictures -- Treasures of Ancient Art collected in our
Noble Houses -- Horace Walpole’s Wish, that all our Noble Mansions
were congregated in London -- beneficial Influence of the Country
Residence of the Aristocracy -- Feelings of Horace Walpole on
visiting his Father’s House at Houghton 249
CHAPTER V.
Hardwicke Hall -- the Author’s Visit to it on the present Duke’s
coming of Age -- Scenes which presented themselves -- a Second
Visit with a Party of Friends -- a Third Visit after the lapse of
Twenty Years -- Present Aspect of the Place -- Building Mania of
Bess of Hardwicke -- Remains of the Old Hall of Hardwicke -- Gog
and Magog -- Arabella Stewart, and Queen of Scots imprisoned there
-- Chapel -- Old Tapestry -- Family Gallery -- Good Taste by which
the House is kept in its Original State -- Statue of the Queen of
Scots -- Mrs. Jameson’s Account of Hardwicke -- the Duke there --
his Apartments -- Contrast of different Ages presented by such
Houses as Hardwicke, Haddon, and Chatsworth 257
CHAPTER VI.
Annesley Hall, and Hucknall -- Annesley Hall, the abode of Mary
Chaworth, most singularly overlooked by Visiters to Newstead --
Tomb and Funeral of Lord Byron -- Scene in the Vault on the
Evening of the Funeral -- Moore’s Visit to the Tomb -- Variety of
Visiters shewn by the Book kept by the Clerk -- Inscription by
Lord Byron’s Sister -- Interesting Signatures -- ANNESLEY HALL --
the Hill mentioned by Byron in “The Dream” -- Curious Mistake by
Moore -- the “Diadem of Trees in circular array,” cut down by Mary
Chaworth’s Husband -- a Mechanic’s Exclamation on hearing of it --
Interesting Aspect of the Old Place in its Woods -- State of
Desolation in which it was found by the Author -- the Old
Housekeeper -- Description of the Interior -- Superstitions of the
Place -- Paper Cuttings on the Drawing-room Screen -- Likeness of
Mary Chaworth thereon -- Fine Old Terrace -- Scene of Lord Byron’s
last Interview with Mary Chaworth -- her melancholy after-life
here -- Impressions during the Visit to this Place 268
CHAPTER VII.
Newstead Abbey -- Picturesque Approach to it -- Recollection of a
former Visit -- the Desolation of the Place then -- Byron’s own
Description of it -- the Gallery -- the Library -- Sculls and
Crucifix -- Dog’s Tomb -- the Satyr Statues -- Eccentric Character
of the former Lord Byron -- Anecdotes of Lord Byron’s Minority --
Paintings connected with the Poet’s History -- General good Taste
displayed by the present Possessor of the Abbey -- Exceptions to
this Taste -- General Description of the Abbey from Don Juan --
Houses of Fletcher and Rushton -- Tree inscribed by Lord Byron --
Demolition of the Mill -- Concluding Remarks on the Old Houses of
England, and List of the most remarkable 290
CHAPTER VIII.
Characteristics of Park Scenery 302
PART IV.
CAUSES OF THE STRONG ATTACHMENT OF THE ENGLISH TO COUNTRY LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
Love of the Sublime and Beautiful in Nature more eminently
developed in Modern than in Classical Literature -- the Fact
striking, that the Love of Nature is so conspicuous in our
Literature, more faint in that of the Continent, still more in
that of the Ancients -- this Affection only developed in
proportion to the Intellectual Culture of our Nature -- the same
Objects pursued in Art as in Literature, the Sublime and Beautiful
-- the Greek Poets more cognizant of the Amenities than the
Sublimity of Nature -- Homer the greatest Exception -- Instances
of his higher Perceptions -- Hesiod nearly destitute of it --
Theocritus most alive to the Picturesque -- his Picture of the Two
Fishermen, of King Anycus, of a Drinking-cup -- his luxurious
Sense of Out-of-door Enjoyment -- Love of Nature amongst the
Romans -- one Cause of the continuance of their Simplicity of Life
-- instanced in Virgil, Horace, and Cicero -- Modern Literature a
New World of Feeling and Sentiment -- Difference between Longinus
and Burke -- Love of Nature in the Ancients, incidental -- Ours a
perpetual Affection -- Instanced in Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron
-- Originating cause to be found in Christianity -- Development of
it in the Hebrew Literature -- Completion of it in the Christian
Revelation -- Proofs of this 305
CHAPTER II.
Development of the Love of the Country greater in English than in
Continental Literature -- Comparison of our Literature, in various
Departments, with the Continental -- German Literature kindred to
the English -- The Idylls of Voss -- Testimony of a French Writer
to our greater Love of Nature -- the Influence of the Writings of
John Wilson in Blackwood’s Magazine, and of Bewick’s Wood-cuts 324
CHAPTER III.
Influence of Wood-engraving on the Love of the Picturesque in the
Country -- Introduction of Stereotyping Wood-cuts in the Cheap
Magazines -- Probable Results from the Use of the Art -- in what
respects Wood is superior to Copper or Steel -- Causes that
prevent the Successors of Bewick equalling him in Knowledge of
Nature -- how this Defect is to be remedied 341
PART V.
THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
The Forests of England -- Our Forests amongst our most interesting
Objects -- Scenery of England as we may suppose it in the Feudal
Ages, and as it is now -- Charms with which our Imaginations and
Town Restraints have invested the Feudal Times -- Antiquity of our
Forests -- Derivation of the Name -- New Forest created by the
Conqueror; Sixty-seven Forests previously existing -- Various
Opinions respecting the Origin of New Forest -- the Ravages of
William, and Death of his two Sons and Grandson in it -- Number of
Forests, Chases, and Parks formerly belonging to the Crown --
Forest System an Imperium in Imperio -- Its Courts, Laws, and
Officers -- Consequences of the few Judges, and long Intervals
between Trials -- Severity of both Laws and Oaths on the Officers
-- Freeholds granted in Forests subject to the Forest Laws --
Forest Boundaries of a peculiar Description -- Drifts of the
Forest -- Barbarous Penalties for killing Deer decreed by the
Norman Kings -- these softened by successive Monarchs -- Preamble
of the Assise of the Forest of Edward I. -- Law of Attachment of
Offenders in the Forest expressed in an old Rhyme -- Lawing of
Dogs; in what it consisted -- Other curious Provisions of the
Assises of the Forests -- Regarders appointed by Henry II. --
their Duties -- Inquisitions into the State of Forests by
Elizabeth -- the Forest Laws disused after the Revolution -- List
of the Ancient Forests 348
CHAPTER II.
New Forest -- Retains more of its Forest Character than any other
-- Boundaries now nearly the same as in Charles II.’s time --
Places in the Forest -- Its Features as you pass through it -- as
compared with other Forests -- not the Ruin of a Forest, but a
Forest in its Prime -- the Cause of this -- Picturesque Style of
the Cottages and small Enclosures in its Neighbourhood -- a Day’s
Stroll through it by the Author -- Feelings inspired by its
Solitude and Air of Antiquity -- Forest Farms, Swine, Cattle and
their Bells -- Spot where Rufus was killed, near Stony-Cross --
the Descendants of Purkess, who conveyed the body of Rufus to
Winchester -- Tradition of the Cart-wheel -- Gilpin’s Parsonage
and School -- his Opinion of the Origin of the New Forest Horses
-- Wild Population of the Forest -- Adventure of a Physician with
them -- Forest Walks and Lodges -- Stirrup of Rufus preserved at
Lyndhurst -- the Forest Court a singular Scene, as described by
Mr. Stewart Rose 366
CHAPTER III.
Sherwood Forest -- In a very different State to New Forest --
Celebrated as the Scene of Robin Hood’s Exploits -- the Norman
Kings, especially John, fond of Hunting there -- Formerly of great
Extent; containing Nottingham, Mansfield, Annesley, Newstead, etc.
-- Its Constitution and Affairs -- Curious Fact regarding the
Byrons and Chaworths -- Present Extent of the Forest -- Bilhaghe
an unique and impressive Remains of a Portion of it -- Birkland a
beautiful Tract of Birch Woodland -- Its Fairyland Character --
Concluding Remarks 380
CHAPTER IV.
Forest Enclosures -- Injuries to the Arts, Manufactures, and the
Intellectual Taste of the Public to be apprehended from such
Enclosures -- Logic of Lawyers and Land-Surveyors -- Open Lands
needed for Public Enjoyment -- that Open Lands are Unproductive,
shewn to be a very false Notion -- the Unchristian Principle on
which Enclosures have been conducted -- Enclosures inimical to our
National Interests -- Numbers who seek the Refreshment of Summer
Visits to our Forests, Coasts, Moors, and Mountains -- the
Utilitarian Enclosures of certain Lands recommended 388
CHAPTER V.
Wild English Cattle -- Places where they still exist -- Bewick’s
Description of them -- the Author’s Visit to Chillingham Park in
1836, to see the great Herd -- Lord Tankerville’s Account of them 393
PART VI.
HABITS, AMUSEMENTS, AND CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.
CHAPTER I.
Cottage Life -- Wide Space between the Life of the Hall and that
of the Cottage -- the Routine of the Labourer’s Life -- a Blow
aimed at his Domestic Security -- a Highland Hut -- a Night passed
in one -- Abodes of Poverty called Rookeries -- the Beauty of
English Cottages in some Parts of England -- a Thought on seeing
such by Professor Wilson -- Delightfulness of some of the Cottages
of the Wealthy and Refined 402
CHAPTER II.
Popular Festivals and Festivities -- Sketch of their History -- of
Catholic Origin -- The great Change in the Public Taste regarding
them traced to the Reformation -- Subsequent co-operating Causes
pointed out -- the Intellectual Character of the Popular Taste
still Progressive 414
CHAPTER III.
May-Day Festivities -- Formerly celebrated with more Gaiety than
any others -- Came down from Pagan Antiquity in all their Arcadian
Beauty -- It was the Festival of the Poets -- None now more
entirely obsolete -- Washington Irving’s Delight at seeing
Plough-bullocks and May-poles in the Neighbourhood of Newstead --
great Decline of these things during the last Thirty Years even
there -- a few May-poles still to be found in Nottinghamshire and
Derbyshire -- May-dances quite gone by -- May day celebrated with
enthusiasm by the Poets -- European Observance of May derived from
the Roman Festival of Flora -- Saxon Customs of this period of the
year -- Druid Customs -- Blowing of Horns at Oxford and other
places -- Custom mentioned by Erasmus, of placing a Deer’s Horns
on St. Paul’s Altar -- Custom of the Hindus -- Beltane in Ireland
and Scotland -- May-feast of Northumberland -- Fishing for the
Wedding-ring -- Roman Feast of Flora imitated in France and
England -- Various Additions here of Robin Hood, Maid Marian,
Friar Tuck, etc. -- Spenser and Herrick’s description of May-day
Festivities -- Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and James I.’s going
a-Maying -- Sheriffs and Aldermen of London going a-Maying --
Congratulated by Lydgate the Poet -- In 1644, all May-poles pulled
down -- In 1654 Maying again, in presence of the Lord Protector --
Great May-pole in the Strand raised again at the Restoration --
Aubrey’s Account of the May-booms in Holland -- Complaints of
Aubrey and Evelyn of Injury done to the Woods by Mayers -- May
Customs that yet remain 421
CHAPTER IV.
Easter Festivities -- May the Festival of the Young, Easter that
of the Church -- Celebration of Easter in Catholic Countries --
Royal Distribution of Alms on Maunday Thursday at Whitehall, still
kept up -- Easter at Moscow, Jerusalem, Rome, and other Places --
Eating Hot-cross buns, and going to Church the sole remaining
Ceremonies in England -- Easter Morning as described by Goethe --
Strange Plays acted in Churches by the Monks at Easter --
Churchwardens’ Accounts at Reading for such Expenses -- Paschal
Lights -- Lighting the Annual Fire at the Holy Sepulchre at
Jerusalem -- Easter Customs in various Countries -- Paschal Eggs
-- Peculiar Privileges attached to their Presentation in Russia --
Courts shut, and Business suspended formerly in London -- Still a
Time of great Recreation to Mechanics there -- Less observed in
Country Towns -- Pace-eggs still given in some Countries --
Heaving, or Lifting -- Ball Play 432
CHAPTER V.
Whitsuntide Festivities -- Sole Religious Festival that continues
a Popular one -- this partly owing to Friendly Societies -- Joyous
Aspect of this Village Fete -- Whitsuntide Village Processions as
seen by the Author in his Youth -- fine Subject for a Painter --
these Love-Feasts of the People very appropriate to this Period,
being that of the AGAPAI, or Love-Feasts of the early Christians
-- Objections to their being held at Public Houses -- this
remediable -- Whitsuntide as witnessed at Warsop in
Nottinghamshire -- Concluding Remarks 444
CHAPTER VI.
Christmas Festivities -- the Festival of the Fireside -- Its
Ancient Usages made familiar by our Popular Writers -- Burton’s
Account of Christmas Games -- Withers’ Poetical Description of
Christmas 200 years ago -- Scott’s View of them as seen in the
past -- Pageants at this Season in Catholic Countries, as at Rome,
Naples, and in Spain -- Interesting Domestic Custom in Germany --
Christmas as now passed by the Poor, and by the Middle and Higher
Classes -- the Waits -- Christmas Visiting and Country Games --
Christmas Carols, as sung about Manchester, collected by the late
Miss Jewsbury -- Christmas Customs still kept up -- George and the
Dragon -- Blessing Orchards, etc. -- Concluding Remarks on the
Present State of Popular Festivals 451
CHAPTER VII.
The Fairy Superstitions -- Fairies all vanished from the Country
-- gone in Chaucer’s Days -- Bishop Corbett’s Farewell to them --
Hogg their last Poet -- Fairies of Caldon-Low -- Made Immortal by
Milton and Shakspeare -- Belief of them yet lingering in Wales --
Robin Goodfellow and the Lubberfiend of Milton thrown out of
employ by the Thrashing Machine -- Fairie’s-Waterfall at
Aberpergum -- Morgan Lewis the Neath Guide’s Account of their
positive Departure 473
CHAPTER VIII.
The Village Inn -- the Old-fashioned Village Inn a very different
place to the New Beer-Shop -- its General Aspect -- its Old Tree
-- Remarkable Tree of this kind at the Golden Grove, near Chertsey
-- the Country Inn Kitchen -- Description of Landlords by which
such Inns are kept -- their Cleanness and Rural Plenty --
Patronized by all Classes, from the Squire downwards -- Humorous
Characters often found there -- Curious Scene once witnessed by
the Author at a Country Inn in Yorkshire -- The New Beer-Shops a
universal Nuisance 480
CHAPTER IX.
Popular Places of Resort -- Wakes, Statutes, and Fairs -- the
Wake, the Feast of the Dedication of the Parish Church, now
dwindled into a Village Holiday -- Anticipation of it by the Rural
People -- Wake Festivities -- the Wake, in some places yet
connected with Church-rites. -- STATUTES: Meetings by Legal
Statute for the Hiring of Servants -- Attendance of Farmers, their
Wives, and Men and Women Servants -- their Appearance --
Shepherds, Ploughmen, Milkmaids, and their Insignia --
Earnest-Money -- Afternoon Jollification -- in the Northern
Counties the Bondage Girls hired at similar Meetings -- FAIRS:
Places of both Business and Pleasure to all Classes of Country
People -- Nottingham Great October and Goose Fair taken as a
specimen -- Preparations for its Attendance -- Fair Scenery and
Characters -- Proclamation of the Fair -- Corporation Procession
-- Gig Fair -- Peculiar Tastes and Pleasures of Fair-goers -- Good
Subjects for the Painter presented 493
CHAPTER X.
Popular Places of Resort, _continued_ -- The Rural Watering Place 502
CHAPTER XI.
Sports and Pastimes of the People -- History of their Changes and
Present State -- Sports generated by the Feudal Habits -- Sports
introduced by the Catholic Church -- the mere brutal Portion of
both these remaining in the last Century -- many of these now
abolished, and a better Class encouraged -- Sports and Pastimes
prevalent in Farming Districts and obscure Hamlets -- Prevalence
of Cricket -- Description of a Cricket-Match between Nottingham
and the Sussex Club -- Auguries drawn from the Present Popular
Taste 515
CHAPTER XII.
WRESTLING: Its History and present Practice -- this Exercise,
formerly so general, now confined to a few Counties -- Cornwall
and Devon, Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmoreland -- these
Counties possessing Practices peculiar to themselves -- Grand
Annual Wrestling in Clerkenwell, formerly attended by the Lord
Mayor and Corporation of London -- Curious Anecdote of a Minister
of the Society of Friends of that day -- West of England and
Westmoreland and Cumberland Clubs in London -- Attempt of Sir
Thomas Parkyn to establish Wrestling in Nottinghamshire -- Cornish
Wrestling -- Fuller’s Opinion of it -- Account of it by an
Eye-witness -- Champions of Cornwall and Devon -- Games
established at St. Ives in Cornwall by John Knill -- the Canns of
Dartmoor, and Widdicombs of the Moors -- Description of a Match at
the Eagle Tavern Green, City Road, in 1826, between Devon and
Cornwall 531
CHAPTER XIII.
Favourite Pursuits of English Cottagers and Workmen -- the Genius
of the Working Class -- its Effects on the Happiness of that Class
-- almost every Man his Hobby -- Pigeon-fanciers, Dog-fanciers,
Lovers of Music, Singing, Bellringing, Poaching, Bird-stuffing,
Bird-catching -- A Caveat against kidnapping of Nightingales --
Interior of a Bird-catcher’s House -- Anecdote of a Bird catcher
-- Angling, its effect on the Spirits -- Lovers of Gardens and
Bees -- Anecdote of a Bee-lover and the Abbess of Caverswall --
Florists -- Entomologists -- Crabbe’s Description of some known to
him -- Artisan’s Gardens -- Account of 5000 of these at Nottingham
-- Happiness to be diffused through the Working-class by sound
Legislation 541
CHAPTER XIV.
Sunday in the Country -- Goethe’s Description of a Sunday in
Germany -- Applicable in a great degree to Sunday here -- Trip to
Richmond by the Steamer, and its Result -- Passing of Sunday by
many Inhabitants of large Towns -- the Street Preacher -- the
Sailor’s Chapel -- the Irvingite Street-Preacher -- A Camp-meeting
-- Profound Air of Repose in the Country on this Day -- The Farmer
and his Household -- Groups going Churchward -- the Country Church
a Place congenial to Worship -- Social Pleasures of Sunday Evening
-- Millions who enjoy the Blessings of a Day of Rest -- Holy
Influence of Sunday -- Evening Walk 555
CHAPTER XV.
Cheap Pleasures of Country Life -- No great Events needed by the
Lover of Nature to render him Happy -- Recollections of early
Delight in the Country -- Objects of Pleasurable Observation as
they present themselves in the course of the Seasons -- Splendid
Pictures presented by Nature -- the Spirit of Peace and Gladness
inspired by Nature, which renders so delightful the Writings of
White, Evelyn, Walton, etc. -- Testimonies of Coleridge and Sir
Henry Wotton to the profound Satisfaction to be found in Country
Life 574
CHAPTER XVI.
Lingering Customs -- Rapid Disappearance of Old English Customs --
the Beautiful Custom of Hanging Garlands in Village Churches at
the Funerals of Young Maidens, nearly extinct -- Character of the
Primitive Times lingers in the Village Church -- Old-fashioned
Congregations -- Genuine Old Village Clerk -- Circumstances
occurring to the Author in Village Churches -- their Superstitions
-- Village Notions of Angels and Cherubims -- Country Customs at
Funerals -- Poetical Procession of Rush-bearing -- Sanding at
Knutsford -- Eggs and Salt given to Children -- Eating Simnel Cake
-- Riding Stang, May Bushes and their Significance -- Homage to
the New Moon -- Charms -- Superstitions connected with the
Foxglove, the Dog-rose, the Cuckoo, Pigeon’s Feathers, etc. --
Closing of Churchyards of late years -- Richard Howitt’s Remarks
on this Practice 582
CHAPTER XVII.
Education of the Rural Population -- what Education is doing, and
leaving undone in the Poetry of Village Life -- Peculiar Social
Condition of Surrey -- its Effect on the Peasantry -- Need of
Schools -- Mr. Allen’s School of Industry at Lindfield in Sussex
-- Schools of Industry established by the Earl of Lovelace, and
Lady Noel Byron -- School of Lady Noel Byron, at Ealing, Middlesex
-- School of the Earl of Lovelace, at Oakham, Surrey 593
CHAPTER XVIII.
Concluding Chapter -- an extensive Observation of our own Country
recommended -- Every Part presents some Variety of Beauty, Custom,
or other Object worthy of Notice -- Some of these to be found on a
Summer’s Route from London to Devon and Cornwall -- Others in
Routes of the Solitary Pedestrian through the Western, Midland,
and Northern Counties -- the wide Growth of the Spirit of
Enjoyment in such Excursions -- Numbers which throng to all our
Places of Natural Beauty, or Historic Interest -- Concluding
Remarks 603
[Illustration]
PART I.
RURAL LIFE, PURSUITS, AND ADVANTAGES OF THE GENTRY OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
PRE-EMINENCE OF ENGLAND AS A PLACE OF COUNTRY RESIDENCE.
Let every man who has a sufficiency for the enjoyment of life, thank
heaven most fervently that he lives in this country and age. They may
tell us of the beauty of southern skies, and the softness of southern
climates; but where is the land which a man would rather choose to call
himself a native of--because it combines more of the requisites for a
happy and useful existence; more of the moral, social, and intellectual
advantages, without which fair skies or soft climates would become
dolorous, or at best, indifferent? I say, let every man gratefully
rejoice, who has the means of commanding the full blessings of English
life,--for alas! there are thousands and millions of our countrymen who
possess but a scanty portion of these; whose lives are too long and
continuous a course of toil and anxiety to permit them even to look
round them and see how vast are the powers of enjoyment in this country,
and how few of those sources of ease, comfort, and refined pleasure are
within their reach. I trust a better day is coming to this portion of
our population; that many circumstances are working together to confer
on the toiling children of these kingdoms the social rewards which their
unwearied industry so richly merits; but for those who already hold in
their hands the golden key, where is the country like England? If we are
naturally proud of making a portion of a mighty and a glorious kingdom,
where is the kingdom like England? It is a land of which the most
ambitious or magnanimous spirit may well say with a high emotion--“That
is my country!” Over what an extent of the earth it stretches its
territories; over what swarming and diversified millions it extends its
sceptre! On every side of the globe, lie its outspread regions; under
every aspect of heaven, walk its free or tributary people. In the West
Indies; in the vaster dominions of the East; in America and Australia;
through each wide continent, and many a fair island! But its political
and moral power extends even far beyond these. What nation is there,
however great, that does not look with breathless anxiety to the
movements of England; what country is not bound up with it in the
strongest interests and hopes; what country is there which does not feel
the influence of its moral energy? Through all the cities and forests of
Republican America, the spirit of England, as well as its language,
lives and glows. France, Germany, and even Russia to the depths of its
frozen heart, feel the emanations of its free and popular institutions.
Every pulse of love which beats here--every principle of justice that is
more clearly recognised--every sentiment of Christianity that is
elevated on the broad basis of the human heart, hence spreads through
the earth as from a centre of moral life, and produces in the remotest
regions its portion of civilization.
Hence do I love my country!--and partake
Of kindred agitations for her sake;
She visits oftentimes my midnight dream;
Her glory meets me with the earliest beam
Of light, which tells that morning is awake.--_Wordsworth._
It is something to make a part, however small, of such a nation. It is
something to feel that you have such a scope of power and beneficence in
the earth. But when you add to this, the food laid up for the heart and
the intellect in this island--the wealth of literature and science; the
spirit of freedom in which they are nourished, and by which they are
prosecuted; the sound religious feeling which has always distinguished
it as a nation; the philanthropic institutions that exist in it--every
true heart must felicitate itself that its lot is cast in this kingdom.
Such are the moral, political, and intellectual advantages of English
life, which must make any noble-minded and reflecting man feel, as he
considers his position in the scale of humanity, that he is “a citizen
of no mean city.” But our social advantages are not a whit behind these.
Can any state of society be well conceived, on which the arts and
sciences, literature, and general knowledge, can shed more social
conveniences and refined enjoyments? In our houses, in our furniture, in
all the materials for our dresses, in the apparatus for our tables and
the endless variety of good things by which they are supplied, for which
every region has been traversed, and every art in bringing them home, or
raising them at home, has been exerted; in books and paintings; in the
wonderful provision and accumulation of every article in our shops, that
the real wants or the most fanciful desires of men or women may seek
for; in our gardens, roads, the beautiful and affluent cultivation of
the country,--what nation is there, or has there been, which can for a
moment bear a comparison with England?
Ye miserable ancients, had ye these?
And this we may ask, not merely as it respects gas, steam, the
marvellous developments of chemistry and electro-magnetism, by which the
mode and embellishment of our existence have been so much changed
already, and which promise yet changes too vast to be readily
familiarized to the imagination,--but of a thousand other privileges and
conveniences in which England is pre-eminent. It is, however, to our
rural life that we are about to devote our attention; and it is in rural
life that the superiority of England is, perhaps, more striking, than in
any other respect. Over the whole face of our country the charm of a
refined existence is diffused. There is nothing which strikes foreigners
so much as the beauty of our country abodes, and the peculiarity of our
country life. The elegances, the arts, and refinements of the city, are
carried out and blended, from end to end of the island, so beautifully
with the peaceful simplicity of the country, that nothing excites more
the admiration of strangers than those rural paradises, the halls,
castles, abbeys, lodges, and cottages, in which our nobility and gentry
spend more or less of every year. Let Prince Pückler Muskau, Washington
Irving, Willis, Count Pecchio, Rice, and others, tell you how beautiful,
in their eyes, appeared the parks, lawns, fields, and the whole country
of England, cultivated like a garden. It is true that our climate is not
to be boasted of for its perpetual serenity. It has had no lack of
abuse, both from our own countrymen and others. We are none of us
without a pretty lively memory of its freaks and changes, its mists and
tempests; its winters wild as some of late, and its springs that are
often so tardy in their arrival, that they find summer standing in the
gate to tell them they are no longer wanted. All this we know; yet which
of us is not ready to forgive all this, and to say with a full heart,
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still!
Which of us is not grateful and discerning enough to remember, that even
our fickle and imperfect climate has qualities to which England owes
much of its glory, and we, many a proud feeling and victorious energy?
Which of us can forget, that this abused climate, is that which has not
enervated by its heats, has not seduced by its amenities, has not
depopulated by its malaria, so that under its baneful influence we have
become feeble, listless, reckless of honour or virtue; the mean, the
slothful, the crouching slaves of barbarians, or even effeminate
despots: it is that which has done none of these things; produced no
such effects as these; but it is that which has raised millions of
frames strong and muscular and combatant, and enduring as the oaks of
its rocky hills; that has nerved those frames to the contempt alike of
danger and effeminacy; and has quickened them with hearts full of
godlike aspirations after a virtuous glory. What a long line--what ages
after ages, of invincible heroes, of dauntless martyrs for freedom and
religion, of solemn sages and lawgivers, of philosophers and poets, men
sober, and prescient, and splendid in all their endowments as any
country ever produced;--what a line of these has flourished amid the
glooms and severities of this abused climate; and while Italy has sunk
into subjection, and Greece has lain waste beneath the feet of the
Turk--has piled up by a succession of matchless endeavours the fame and
power of England, to the height of its present greatness.
In our halls is hung
Armoury of the invincible knights of old:
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakspeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. In every thing we are sprung
Of earth’s best blood, have titles manifold.
And will any man tell me that the spirit of our climate has had nothing
to do with begetting and nourishing the energy which has borne on to
immortality these great men; which has quickened us with “earth’s best
blood;” which has given us “titles manifold?” The gloom and desolate
majesty of autumn--the wild magnificence of thunder-storms, with their
vivid lightnings, their awful uproar, the lurid darkness of their
clouds, and the outshining of rainbows--have these had no effect
on the meditations of divines and the songs of poets? Has the
soul-concentrating power of winter driven our writers into their closets
in vain? Have the fireside festivities of our darkest season; have the
blazing yule-clog, and the merriment of the old English hall--things
which have grown out of the very asperity of the climate, left no traces
in our literature? Did Milton, Bacon, Spenser, Shakspeare, and such
spirits, walk through our solemn halls, whether of learning, or
religion, or baronial pomp, all of which have been raised by the very
genius of a pensive climate; or did they climb our mountains, and roam
our forests, amid winds that roared in the boughs and whirled their
leaves at their feet, and gather thence no imagery, no similes, no
vigour of thought and language, such as still skies and flowery meadows
could not originate? Let us turn to the lays and romances of Scott and
Byron, and see whether brown heaths and splintered mountains; the savage
ruins of craggy coasts, moaning billows, mists, and rains; the thunder
of cataracts, and the sleep of glens, all seen and felt under the
alternations of seasons and of weather, such only as an unsettled
climate could shew,--have not tinged their spirits, and therefore their
works, with hues of an immortal beauty, the splendid product of a
boisterous climate. Why, they are these influences which have had no
small share in the creation of such men as Burns, Bloomfield, Hogg, and
Clare--the shepherd-poets of a free land, and an out-of-door life. Yes,
we are indebted to our climate for a mass of good, a host of advantages
of which we little dream, till we begin to count them up.
And are all our experiences of the English climate those of gloom? Are
there no glorious sunsets, no summer evenings, balmy as our dreams of
heaven, no long sunny days of summer, no dewy mornings, whose freshness
brings with it ideas of earth in its youth, and the glades of Paradise
trod by the fair feet of Eve? Have we no sweet memories of youth and
friendship, in which such hours, such days, in which fields of harvest,
hay-harvest and corn-harvest, with all their rejoicing rustic companies,
lie in the sunshine? Are there none of excursions through the mountains,
along the sea shores, of sailing on fair lakes, or lying by running
waters in green and flowery dales, while overhead shone out skies so
blue and serene that they seemed as though they could never change? In
every English bosom there lie many such sweet memories; and if we look
through the whole of one of the worst seasons that we have, what
intervals of pleasant weather we find in it. One of the great charms of
this country too, dependent on its climate, is that rich and almost
perpetual greenness, of which strangers always speak with admiration.
But what of climate? There are other claims on our affections for this
noble country, which, were its climate the most splendid under heaven,
would yet cast that far into the shade. What binds us closely to it,
next to our living ties, is that every inch of English ground is
sanctified by noble deeds, and intellectual renown; but on this topic
Mrs. Howitt has, in her Wood-Leighton, put into the mouth of a worthy
clergyman of Staffordshire, words that will better express my feelings,
than any I can now use.
“I know not how it is; I cannot comprehend the feeling, with which many
quit this noble country for ever for strange lands. And yet it may be
said, that hundreds do it every day; and for thousands it may indeed be
well. For those who have had no prospect but the daily struggle for
existence; for those whose minds have not been opened and quickened
into a sense of the higher and more spiritual enjoyments which this
country affords; for the labouring many, the valleys of Australia or the
vast forests and prairies of America may be alluring. But to me,--and
therefore, it seems, equally to other men with like tastes and
attachments--to quit England, noble, fearless, magnanimous, and
Christian England, would be to cut asunder life, and hope, and happiness
at once. No! till I voyage to ‘the better land,’ I could never quit
England. What! after all the ages that have been spent in making it
habitable, and home-like; after all the blood shed in its defence, and
for the maintaining of its civil polity; after all the consumption of
patriotic thought and enterprise, the labours of philosophers, divines,
and statesmen, to civilize and Christianize it; after the time, the
capital, the energies employed, from age to age, to cultivate its
fields, dry up marshes, build bridges, and lay down roads, raise cities,
and fill every house with the products of the arts and the wealth of
literature; can there be a spot of earth that can pretend to a tithe of
its advantages, or a spot that creates in the heart that higher tone
necessary for their full enjoyment? Why, every spot of this island is
sanctified, not only by the efforts of countless patriots, but as the
birth-place and abode of men of genius. Go where you will, places
present themselves to your eyes which are stamped with the memory of
some one or other of those ‘burning and shining lights,’ that have
illuminated the atmosphere of England with their collective splendour,
and made it visible to the men of farthest climates. Even in this
secluded district, which, beautiful as it is, is comparatively little
known or spoken of, amongst the generality of English people, how many
literary recollections surround you! To say nothing of the actors in
great historical scenes; the Talbots, Shrewsburys, Dudleys, and Bagots
of former ages; or the Ansons, Vernons, St. Vincents, and Pagets of the
later and present ones; in this county were born those excellent
bishops, Hurd and Newton, and the venerable antiquary and herald, Elias
Ashmole. To say nothing of the amount of taste and knowledge that exist
in the best classes of society hereabout, we have to-day passed the
houses of Thomas Gisborne and Edward Cooper, clergymen who have done
honour to their profession by their talents and the liberality of their
sentiments. In that antiquated Fauld Hall, once lived old Squire
Burton, the brother of the author of the ‘Anatomy of Melancholy;’ and
there is little doubt that some part of that remarkable work was written
there. By that Dove, Izaak Walton, that pious old man, that lover of the
fields, and historian of the worthies of the church, used to stroll and
meditate, or converse with his friend Charles Cotton, a Staffordshire
man too. In the woods of Wotton, which are very visible hence by
daylight, once wandered a very different, but very distinguished person,
the wayward Rousseau. In Uttoxeter, that great, but ill-used, and
ill-understood astronomer, Flamstead, received the greater part of his
education; and from Lichfield, the spires of whose cathedral we have
seen to-day, went out Johnson and Garrick, each to achieve supremacy in
his own track of distinction. And there, too, lived Anna Seward, who,
with all her egotism and faults of taste, was superior to the women of
her age, and had the sagacity to perceive amongst the very first, the
dawning fame of Southey and Sir Walter Scott.
“If this comparatively obscure district can thus boast of having given
birth or abode to so many influential intellects, what shall not
England--entire and glory-crowned England? And who shall not feel proud
to own himself of its race and kindred; and, if he can secure for
himself a moderate share of its common goods, be happy to live and die
in it!”
Thus it is all England through. There is no part of it, in which you do
not become aware that there some portion of our national glory has
originated. The very coachmen as you traverse the highways, continually
point out to you spots made sacred by men and their acts. There say
they, was born, or lived, Milton or Shakspeare, Locke or Bacon, Pope or
Dryden; that was the castle of Chaucer; there, now, lives Wordsworth,
Southey, or Moore. There Queen Elizabeth was confined in her youth, here
she confined Mary of Scotland in her age. There Wickliffe lived, and
here his ashes were scattered in the air by his enemies. There Hooker
watched his sheep while he pondered on his Ecclesiastical Polity. Here
was born Cromwell, or Hampden--here was the favourite retreat of
Chatham, Fox, Pitt, or other person, who in his day exerted a powerful
influence on the mind or fortunes of this country. These perpetual
monitions that we are walking in a land filled from end to end with
glorious reminiscences, make country residence in England so delightful.
But the testimony of foreigners is more conclusive than our own; and
therefore, we will close this chapter with the impression which the
entrance into England made on two Americans--Washington Irving and Mr.
Willis. Irving’s mind was full of the inspiration of the character of
England as he had found it in books. “There is to an American, a volume
of associations with the very name. It is the land of promise, teeming
with every thing of which his childhood has heard, or on which his
studious years have pondered. The ships of war, that prowled like
guardian giants along the coast; the headlands of Ireland, stretching
out into the Channel; the Welsh mountains, towering into the clouds; all
were objects of intense interest. As we sailed up the Mersey, I
reconnoitred the shores with a telescope. My eye dwelt with delight on
neat cottages, with their trim shrubberies and green grass-plots. I saw
the mouldering ruin of an abbey overrun with ivy, and the taper spire of
a village church rising from the brow of a neighbouring hill--all were
characteristic of England.” That is the feeling of an American, arriving
here directly from his own country: this is that of one coming from the
European Continent. Mr. Willis says, on landing at Dover: “My companion
led the way to an hotel, and we were introduced by _English_ waiters (I
had not seen such a thing in three years, and it was quite like being
waited on by gentlemen) to two blazing coal fires in the coffee-room of
the ‘Ship.’ O, what a comfortable place it appeared! A rich Turkey
carpet snugly fitted; nicely rubbed mahogany tables; the morning papers
from London; bell-ropes that _would_ ring the bell; doors that _would_
shut; a landlady that spoke English, and was kind and civil; and, though
there were eight or ten people in the room, no noise above the rustle of
a newspaper, and positively rich red damask curtains, neither
second-hand nor shabby, to the windows! A greater contrast than this, to
the things that answer to them on the Continent, could scarcely be
imagined. The fires were burning brilliantly, and the coffee-room was in
the nicest order when we descended to our breakfast at six the next
morning. The tea-kettle singing on the hearth, the toast was hot, and
done to a turn, and the waiter was neither sleepy nor uncivil,--all,
again, very unlike a morning at an hotel in _La belle_ France. England
is described always very justly, and always in the same words, ‘it is
all one garden.’ There is scarce a cottage, between Dover and London
(seventy miles) where a poet might not be happy to live. I saw a hundred
little spots I coveted with quite a heart-ache. Everybody seemed
employed, and everybody well-made and healthy. The relief from the
deformity and disease of the way-side beggars of the Continent was very
striking.”
It is through this England, thus worthy of our love, whether as seen by
our own eyes, or the eyes of intelligent foreigners, that we are about
to make our progress, visiting plain and mountain, farm and hamlet, and
making acquaintance with the dwellings, habits, and feelings of both
gentle and simple.
CHAPTER II.
ENVIABLE POSITION OF THE ENGLISH COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, AS REGARDS ALL THE
PLEASURES AND ADVANTAGES OF LIFE.
Alexander of Macedon said if he were not Alexander, he would choose to
be Diogenes; Alexander of Russia also said if he were not Alexander, he
would choose to be an English gentleman. And truly, it would require
some ingenuity to discover any earthly lot like that of the English
gentleman. The wealth and refinement at which this country has arrived,
have thrown round English rural life every possible charm. Every art and
energy is exerted in favour of the English gentleman. Look at the
ancient castle, or the mansion of later ages, and then at the dwelling
of the private gentleman now, and what a difference! The castle with its
dungeon-like apartments, its few loop-holes for windows, its walls,
mounds, moats, drawbridges, and other defences to keep out the hostile
prowlers which a semi-savage state of society brought, ever and anon,
around it. Look at its naked walls, its massy, lumbering doors, its
floors spread with rushes, and the rude style in which bed and board
were constructed and served; and then turn your eyes on the modern
mansion of the country gentleman. What a lovely sight is that! What a
bright and pleasant abode, instead of that heavy, martial pile! What a
fair country--what a peaceful, well-ordered population surround it,
instead of dreary forests, and savage hordes! And look again at the
mansion of the feudal ages; see its large, cheerless, tapestried halls,
its ill-fitting doors and windows, through which the wintry winds come
whistling and careering. What naked, or rush-strewn floors still; what
rude fashion of furniture, and vessels for the table; what a rude style
of cookery; what a dearth of books; what a miserable and scanty display
of portraits on the walls, making those they are intended to represent,
look grim and hard as a generation of ogres. Then again, look at the
modern mansion. What a snug and silken nest of delight is that. See what
the progress of the arts and civilization has done for it. How light and
airily it rises in some lovely spot. How it is carpeted, and draped with
rich hangings and curtains. What soft and elegant beds; what a superior
grace in the fashion of furniture, and all household utensils. Silver
and gold, brass and steel, porcelain and glass, into what rich and
beautiful shapes have they been wrought by skilful hands for all
purposes. See what a variety of rooms; what a variety of inventions in
those rooms, which artificial and refined wants have called into
existence. What books enrich the fair library; what glorious paintings
grace its delicately-papered walls. Hark! music is issuing from
instruments of novel and most ingenious construction. And all around
what a splendidly cultivated country! What lovely gardens, in which
flowers from every region are blowing. Here is a vast change!--a vast
advance from the rude life of our ancestors; and the more we look into
the present state of domestic life, the more we shall perceive the
admirable perfection of its economy and arrangements. What was the life
of our great nobility formerly in their country halls? With little
intercourse with the capital; in the midst of huge forests, and almost
impassable roads; hunting and carousing were their chief pleasures and
employments, amid a throng of rude retainers. Look now at the mode of
life of a private gentleman of no extraordinary revenue. When he comes
down in a morning, he finds on his breakfast-table the papers which left
London probably on the previous evening, bringing him the news of the
whole world. There is nothing which is going on in Parliament, in the
courts of law, in public meetings in the capital, or in any town of the
kingdom; no birth, marriage, death, or any occurrence of importance, but
they are all laid before him; there is nothing done or said in the
mercantile, the literary, the scientific world, nothing which can affect
the interests of his country in the most remote degree; nothing, indeed,
which can thoroughly affect the well-being of men all the world over,
but there it is too. He sits in the midst of his woods and groves, in
the quietness of the country a hundred miles from the capital, and is as
well acquainted with the movements and incidents of society as a
reigning prince could have been some years ago, by couriers,
correspondents, spies, fast-sailing packets, and similar agencies,
maintained by all the aid and revenues of a nation. And for his morning
meal, China and the Indies, east and west, send him their tea, coffee,
sugar, chocolate, and preserved fruits. Lapland sends its reindeer
tongues; Westphalia its hams; and his own rich land abundance of rural
dainties. When breakfast is over, if he ask himself how he shall pass
the day, what numerous and inexhaustible resources present themselves to
his choice. Will he have music? The ladies of his family can give it
him, in a high style of excellence. Does he love paintings? His walls,
and those of his wealthy neighbours, are covered with them. There are
said to be more of the works of the great masters accumulated in our
English houses than in all the world besides. Is he fond of books? What
a mass of knowledge is piled up around him! Greece, Rome, Palestine,
Arabia, India, France, Germany, Italy, every country, ancient or modern,
which has distinguished itself by its genius and intelligence, has
poured into his halls its accumulated wealth of heart and imagination.
There is hoarded up in his library, food for the most insatiate spirit
for an eternity. In the literature and science merely of this country,
he possesses more than the enjoyment of a life. Think only of the works
of our historians and divines, of our travellers,--our natural, moral,
and scientific philosophers; of the wit, the pathos, the immense extent
of inventions and facts in our general literature; of the glorious and
ennobling themes of our great poets. What a mighty difference is there
between the existence of one of our old baronial ancestors, who could
not read, but as he sate over his winter fire solaced his spirit with
the lays of a wandering minstrel; and of him who has at his command all
the intellectual splendour, power and wit, the satire, the joyous story,
the humour, the elegance of phrase and of mind, the profound sentiment
and high argument of such men as Chaucer, Spenser, Ben Jonson,
Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Steele,
Pope, Sam Johnson, Goldsmith, Cowper, and the noble poets of the present
day. Is it possible that _ennui_ can come near a man who can at any
moment call to his presence our Jeremy Taylors and Tillotsons, our
Barrows, Burnets, and Stillingfleets--our travellers from every corner
of the earth, and our great novelists with their everlasting inventions?
Why, there is more delight in one good country library, than any one
mortal life can consume. If a man’s house were situated in a desert of
sand, the magic of this divine literature were enough to raise around
him an elysium of perpetual greenness.
But it is not merely within doors that the singular privileges of an
English gentleman lie. He need only step out, and he sees them
surrounding him on every side. His gardens--by the labours and
discoveries of centuries, by the genius of some men who have blended the
spirit of nature most happily with that of art, and by the researches of
others who have collected into this country the vegetable beauty and
wealth of the whole world--have been made more delightful than those of
Alcinous or Armida. Look at his glazed walls, his hot and green houses,
which supply his table with the most delicious dessert. But go
on--advance beyond the boundaries of his gardens, and the pleasant
winding walks of his shrubberies, and where are you? In the midst of his
park, his farms, his woods, and plantations. Now every one knows the
healthful and perpetual recreation to be found in any one of these
places; the intense delight which many of our country gentlemen take in
them, and the beauty and pre-eminence of our English parks, farms, and
woods, in consequence. We shall speak more particularly of them
presently; but it must not here be forgotten what a boundless field of
enjoyment, and increase of wealth, science has of late years opened to
the amateur farmer, and to the country gentlemen in general. To their
fields, agricultural chemistry, mineralogy, botany, vegetable
physiology, entomology, etc., have brought new and inexhaustible charms.
They have, in a manner, enlarged the territories of the smallest
proprietor into kingdoms of boundless extent and interest. In the study
of soils, their defects and remedies; in the selection of plants most
consonant to the earth in which they are to grow, or the adaptation of
the earth to them; in the inquiry into the mineral wealth that lies
below the surface; in cultivating an acquaintance with the various
animals, and especially insects, on whose presence or absence depends in
a great degree the proper growth or destruction of crops and young
woods: in all these the country gentleman has a source of noble and
profitable employment for the main part unknown to his ancestors, and
worthy of his most earnest pursuit.
But, if all these means of happiness were not enough to satisfy his
desires, or did not chime in with his taste, see what another field of
animating and praiseworthy endeavour lies before him still, in the
official service of his country. Retaining his character of a country
gentleman, he can accept the office of a magistrate, and become, if so
disposed, a real benefactor and peacemaker to his neighbourhood. But he
need not stop here. There is no country, not excepting British America,
where the path of public service lies so open to a man of fortune, or is
so wide in its reach. He can enter Parliament; and residing part of the
year in the country, can during the other part take his place in an
assembly, that for the importance of its discussions and acts has no
fellow; for there is no other legislative assembly in the whole world
where, with similar freedom of constitution, the same mighty mass of
human interests is concerned--to which the same vast extent of influence
is appended. I need do no more in proof of this, than merely point to
the position of England amid the nations of the earth; her wealth and
activity at home; her enormous territories abroad. Over all this,--over
this extent of country, over these millions of beings, there is not a
single country gentleman who has the ambition, but who may be called to
exercise an influence. Here is a field of labour, enough of itself to
fill the amplest desires, and by which, if he have the talent, any man
of fortune may rise to the highest pitch of rank and distinction.
But if the country gentleman have not the ambition, or the love of so
active a life; if he desire to enjoy himself in a different way, there
is yet abundant choice. He may travel, if he please; and what a rich
expanse of pleasures and interests lies before him in that direction. In
our own islands there is a variety of scenery not to be rivalled in the
same space in any other part of the world. The mountains, the lakes, the
rivers of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, those of Cumberland and Derbyshire;
the rich plains; the busy cities, with all their arts and curious
manufactures; our ports, with all their interesting scenes; the various
historical and antiquarian objects; the numerous breeds of cattle,
sheep, and horses; the varied kinds of vegetable products, and modes of
farming;--these, to a mind of any taste and intelligence, offer
plentiful matter of observation in short summer excursions. And what
splendid roads, fleet horses, convenient carriages, and excellent inns,
are ready to convey him on the way, or receive him for refreshment. If
he is disposed to go abroad, who has the money, or the education, to
give facility and advantage to travel in every region like the English
gentleman?--Such are the privileges and pleasures attendant on the
country gentleman of England. In all these he has, or may have, the
society of women whose beauty and intelligence are everywhere
acknowledged; and for the ladies of England living in the country, there
are books, music, the garden, the conservatory--an abundance of elegant
and womanly occupations. There are drives through woods and fields of
the most delicious character; there is social intercourse with
neighbouring wealthy families, and a host of kind offices to poor ones,
which present the sweetest sources of enjoyment.
I think the extraordinary blessings and privileges of English rural life
have never been sufficiently considered. It is only when we begin to
count them up that we become aware of their amount, and surpassing
character. What is there of divine sentiment or earthly knowledge, of
physical, intellectual, or religious good; what is there of generous,
social, reflective, retiring or aspiring; what is there of freshness and
beauty; of luxurious in life, or preparatory to a peaceful death; what
is there that can purify the spirit, ennoble the heart, and prompt men
to a wise and extensive beneficence, which may not be found in English
rural life? It has every thing in it which is beautiful, and may become
glorious and godlike.
Such golden deeds lead on to golden days,
Days of domestic peace--by him who plays
On the great stage how uneventful thought;
Yet with a thousand busy projects fraught,
A thousand incidents that stir the mind
To pleasure, such as leaves no sting behind!
Such as the heart delights in--and records
Within how silently--in more than words!
A Holiday--the frugal banquet spread
On the fresh herbage, near the fountain-head.
With quips and cranks--what time the woodlark there
Scatters his loose notes on the sultry air;
What time the kingfisher sits hushed below,
Where silver-bright the water-lilies blow:--
A Wake--the booths whitening the village green,
Where Punch and Scaramouch aloft are seen;
Sign beyond sign in close array unfurled,
Picturing at large the wonders of the world;
And far and wide, over the Vicar’s pale,
Black hoods and scarlet crossing hill and dale,
All, all abroad, and music in the gale:--
A Wedding Dance--a dance into the night,
On the barn-floor, when maiden feet are light;
When the young bride receives the promised dower,
And flowers are flung, herself a fairer flower:
A Morning-visit to the poor man’s shed,
(Who would be rich while one was wanting bread?)
Where all are emulous to bring relief,
And tears are falling fast--but not for grief;--
A Walk in Spring--GRATTAN, like those with thee
By the heath-side (who had not envied me?)
When the sweet limes, so full of bees in June,
Led us to meet beneath their boughs at noon:
And thou didst say which of the great and wise,
Could they but hear and at thy bidding rise,
Thou would’st call up and question.
Graver things
Come in their turn. Morning and evening brings
Its holy office; and the sabbath bell,
That over wood and wild, and mountain-dell,
Wanders so far, chasing all thoughts unholy,
With sounds most musical, most melancholy,
Not on his ear is lost. Then he pursues
The pathway leading through the aged yews,
Nor unattended; and when all are there,
Pours out his spirit in the House of Prayer,--
That House with many a funeral-garland hung,
Of virgin white--memorials of the young;
The last yet fresh when marriage chimes were ringing,
And hope and joy in other hearts were springing;--
That House where age led in by filial love,--
Their looks composed, their thoughts on things above,
The world forgot, or all its wrongs forgiven--
Who would not say they trod the path to Heaven?
_Rogers’ Human Life._
CHAPTER III.
LIFE OF THE GENTRY IN THE COUNTRY.
One of the chief features of the life of the nobility and gentry of
England, is their annual visit to the metropolis; and it is one which
has a most essential influence upon the general character of rural life
itself. The greater part of the families of rank and fortune flock up to
town annually, as punctually as the Jews flocked up to Jerusalem at the
time of the Passover; and it may be said for the purpose of worship too,
though worship of a different kind--that of fashion. A considerable
portion of them being, more or less, connected with one or other House
of Parliament, go up at the opening of Parliament, generally in
February, and remain there till the adjournment, often in July; but the
true season does not commence till April.
When April verdure springs in Grosvenor Square,
Then the furred beauty comes to winter there.--_Rogers._
Much has been said of the evil effect of this aristocratic habit, of
spending so much time in the metropolis; of the vast sums there spent in
ostentatious rivalry, in equipage and establishments; in the
dissipations of theatres, operas, routes, and gaming-houses; and
unquestionably, there is much truth in it. On the other hand, it cannot
be denied that this annual assembling together has some advantages. A
great degree of knowledge and refinement results from it, amid all the
attendant folly and extravagance. The wealthy are brought into contact
with vast numbers of their equals and superiors, and that sullen and
haughty habit of reserve is worn off, which is always contracted by
those who live in solitary seclusion, in the midst of vast estates,
with none but tenants and dependents around them. They are also brought
into contact with men of talent and intelligence. They move amongst
books and works of art, and are induced by different motives to become
patrons and possessors of these things. If they spend large sums in
splendid houses and establishments in town, such houses and such
establishments become equally necessary to them in the country; and it
is by this means that, instead of old and dreary castles and chateaux,
we have such beautiful mansions, so filled with rich paintings and
elegant furniture, dispersed all over England. From these places, as
centres existing here and there, similar tastes are spread through the
less wealthy classes, and the elegances of life flow into the
parsonages, cottages, and abodes of persons of less income and less
intercourse with society. In town, undoubtedly, a vast number of the
aristocracy spend their time and money very foolishly; but it is equally
true, that many others spend theirs very beneficially to the country.
Men of fortune from all quarters of the kingdom there meet, and every
thing which regards the improvement of their estates is discussed. They
hear of different plans pursued in different parts of the kingdom. They
make acquaintances, and these acquaintances lead to visits, in which
they observe, and copy all that can add to the embellishment of their
abodes, and the value and productiveness of their gardens and estates.
If many acquire a relish only for Newmarket, and the gaming club, and a
strong distaste for the quiet enjoyments of the country; many, on the
other hand, come down to their estates after a season of hurry and
over-excitement, with a fresh feeling for the beauty and repose of their
country abodes. The possessors of great houses and estates, invite a
party to spend the recess, or especially the shooting season, with them.
Thus the world of fashion is broken up and scattered from the metropolis
into a multitude of lesser circles, and into every corner of the empire.
I can conceive nothing which bears on its surface the aspect of the
perfection of human society, so much as this assembling of a choice
party of those who have nothing to do but to enjoy life, in the house of
some hospitable wealthy man, in some one of the terrestrial paradises of
this kingdom,--far off, in some retired vale of England, where the
country and its manners remain almost as simple and picturesque as they
did ages ago. In some fine Elizabethan mansion, some splendid baronial
castle, as Warwick, Alnwick, or Raby; or in some rich old abbey; amid
woods and parks, or seated on one of our wild coasts; or amid the
mountains of Wales or Scotland, with all their beautiful scenery, rocks,
hanging cliffs, dashing waterfalls, rapid rivers, and fairy wildernesses
around them. Here, assembled from the crush and rush of London in its
fulness, with new books and new music brought down with them; with
plenty of topics suggested by the incidents of the past season in the
saloons of the fashionable, and in Parliament; with every luxury before
them; with fine shrubberies and parks, and with every vehicle and
facility for riding and driving through field or forest, or sailing on
river or ocean; if people are not happy in such circumstances, where is
the fault?
And imagine the possessor of a noble estate coming down to receive his
friends there. To a high and generous mind there must be something very
delightful in it. When he enters his own neighbourhood, he enters his
own kingdom. The very market-town through which he last passes, is,
probably, totally or three-fourths of it his property. If he be a kind
and liberal man, the respect which is there testified towards him, has
in it the most cordial of flatteries. When he touches his own land,
every thing acknowledges his absolute sway. On all sides he sees
symptoms of welcome. Wherever he looks, they are the woods, the parks,
the fields of his ancestors, and now his own, that meet his eyes. The
freshness and greenness of the fields, the sombre grandeur of the woods,
the peaceful elegance of his house, all the odours of flowers breathing
through the rooms, and the sight of rich fruits on his walls and in his
hothouses; after the heat, dust, crowding, noise, political contention,
and turning night into day, of London, must be peculiarly grateful. Here
he is sole lord and master; and from him, he feels, flow the good of his
dependent people, and the pleasures of his distinguished guests. The
same where
Far to the south a mountain vale retires,
Rich in its groves, and glens, and village spires;
Its upland lawns, and cliffs with foliage hung,
Its wizard stream, nor nameless nor unsung;
And through the various year, the various day,
Where scenes of glory burst and melt away.--_Rogers._
The hamlet, which shews its thatched roofs and lowly smoking chimneys
near, is all his own; nay, the rustic church is part and parcel of the
family estate. It was probably built and endowed by his ancestors. The
living is in his gift, and is perhaps enjoyed by a relative, or college
chum. The very churchyard, with its simple headstones, and green mounds,
is separated often only by a sunk fence from his grounds. It blends into
them, and the old grey tower lifts itself amongst trees which form one
majestic mass with his own. The sabbath-bell rings, and he enters that
old porch with his guests; he sees the banner of some brave ancestor
float above his head, and the hatchments and memorial inscriptions of
others on the walls. What can be more delicately flattering to all the
feelings of a human creature; what lot can be more perfect?
The ease and perfect freedom from ceremony in these rural gatherings is
a feature which has always excited the admiration of foreigners. Every
guest has his own apartment, where he can retire at pleasure, and after
taking his meals in common can spend the day as he chooses. But, as I
have before said, we see our own customs and manners better in the
descriptions of foreigners, because they are described by them as they
are seen, with the freshness of novelty. Prince Pückler Muskau speaks
with enthusiasm of the country-houses and park scenery of England. His
book, indeed, is full of such pictures of country life and scenery. The
beautiful dairies which he sometimes found in noblemen’s parks delighted
him extremely. Thus he speaks of the one at Woburn Abbey:--“The dairy is
a prominent and beautiful object. It is a sort of Chinese temple,
decorated with a profusion of white marble, and coloured glasses; in the
centre is a fountain, and round the walls hundreds of large dishes and
bowls, of Chinese and Japan porcelain of every form and colour, filled
with new milk and cream. The ‘consoles’ upon which these vessels stand,
are perfect models for Chinese furniture. The windows are of
ground-glass, with Chinese painting, which shews fantastically enough by
the dim light.”
But the testimony of Mr. Willis as an American, and therefore accustomed
to a life and sentiment more allied to our own, is still stronger. His
account of his visit to Gordon Castle is a perfect example of all such
scenes, and is an exact counterpart of the German Prince’s description
of the English “vie de château,” in his third volume, p. 311.
“The immense iron gate, surmounted by the Gordon arms; the handsome and
spacious stone lodges on either side; the canonically fat porter, in
white stockings and grey livery, lifting his hat as he swung open the
massive portal, all bespoke the entrance to a noble residence. The road
within was edged with velvet sward, and rolled to the smoothness of a
terrace walk; the winding avenue lengthened away before with trees of
every variety of foliage; light carriages passed me, driven by gentlemen
or ladies, bound on their afternoon airing; a groom led up and down two
beautiful blood-horses, prancing along with side-saddles and morocco
stirrups; and keepers with hounds and terriers, gentlemen on foot,
idling along the walks, and servants in different liveries hurrying to
and fro, betokened a scene of busy gaiety before me. I had hardly noted
these various circumstances, before a sudden curve in the road brought
the castle into view,--a vast stone pile with castellated wings; and in
another moment I was at the door, where a dozen lounging and powdered
menials were waiting on a party of ladies and gentlemen to their several
carriages. It was the moment for the afternoon drive.
“The last phaeton dashed away, and my chaise advanced to the door. A
handsome boy, in a kind of page’s dress, immediately came to the window,
addressed me by name, and informed me that his Grace was out
deer-shooting, but that my room was prepared, and he was ordered to wait
on me. I followed him through a hall lined with statues, deers’ horns,
and armour, and was ushered into a large chamber looking out on a park,
extending with its lawns and woods to the edge of the horizon. A more
lovely view never feasted human eye.
“‘Who is at the castle?’ I asked, as the boy busied himself in
unstrapping my portmanteau. ‘O, a great many, sir’--he stopped in his
occupation, and began counting on his fingers a long list of lords and
ladies. ‘And how many sit down to dinner?’ ‘Above ninety, sir, besides
the Duke and Duchess.’ ‘That will do;’ and off tripped my slender
gentleman, with his laced jacket, giving the fire a terrible stir-up in
his way out, and turning back to inform me that the dinner hour was
seven precisely.
“It was a mild, bright afternoon, quite warm for the end of an English
September, and with a fire in the room, and a soft sunshine pouring in
at the windows, a seat at the open casement was far from disagreeable. I
passed the time till the sun set, looking out on the park. Hill and
valley lay between my eye and the horizon; sheep fed in picturesque
flocks; and small fallow-deer grazed near them; the trees were planted,
and the distant forest shaped by the hand of taste; and broad and
beautiful as was the expanse taken in by the eye, it was evidently one
princely possession. A mile from the castle-wall, the shaven sward
extended in a carpet of velvet softness, as bright as emerald, studded
by clumps of shrubbery, like flowers wrought elegantly in tapestry; and
across it bounded occasionally a hare, and the pheasants fed undisturbed
near the thickets, or a lady with flowing riding-dress and flaunting
feather, dashed into sight upon her fleet blood-palfrey, and was lost
the next moment in the woods, or a boy put his pony to its mettle up the
ascent, or a gamekeeper idled into sight with his gun in the hollow of
his arm, and his hounds at his heels. And all this little world of
enjoyment and luxury and beauty lay in the hand of one man, and was
created by his wealth in those northern wilds of Scotland, a day’s
journey almost from the possession of another human being! I never
realized so forcibly the splendid results of wealth and primogeniture.
“The sun set in a blaze of fire among the pointed firs crowning the
hills; and by the occasional prance of a horse’s feet on the gravel, and
the roll of rapid wheels, and now and then a gay laugh and many voices,
the different parties were returning to the Castle. Soon after, a loud
gong sounded through the galleries, the signal to dress, and I left my
musing occupation unwillingly to make my toilet for an appearance in a
formidable circle of titled aristocrats, not one of whom I had ever
seen, the Duke himself a stranger to me, except through the kind letter
of invitation lying on the table.
“I was sitting by the fire, imagining forms and faces for the different
persons who had been named to me, when there was a knock at the door,
and a tall, white-haired gentleman, of noble physiognomy, but singularly
cordial address, entered with a broad red ribbon across his breast, and
welcomed me most heartily to the castle. The gong sounded at the next
moment, and in our way down, he named over his other guests, and
prepared me, in a measure, for the introductions which followed. The
drawing-room was crowded like a _soirée_. The Duchess, a tall and very
handsome woman, with a smile of the most winning sweetness, received me
at the door, and I was presented successively to every person present.
Dinner was announced immediately, and the difficult question of
precedence being sooner settled than I had ever seen it before in so
large a party, we passed through files of servants to the dining-room.
It was a large and very lofty hall, supported, at the ends, by marble
columns, within which was stationed a band of music playing
delightfully. The walls were lined with full-length family pictures,
from old knights in armour to the modern dukes in kilt of the Gordon
plaid; and on the sideboards stood services of gold plate, the most
gorgeously massive, and the most beautiful in workmanship I have ever
seen. There were, among the vases, several large coursing-cups, won by
the Duke’s hounds, of exquisite shape and ornament.
“I fell into my place between a gentleman and a very beautiful woman, of
perhaps, twenty-two, neither of whose names I remembered, though I had
but just been introduced. The Duke probably anticipated as much, and as
I took my seat, he called out to me, from the top of the table, that I
had on my right, Lady ----, ‘the most agreeable woman in Scotland.’ It
was unnecessary to say that she was the most lovely.
“I have been struck everywhere in England with the beauty of the higher
classes, and as I looked around me upon the aristocratic company at the
table, I thought I had never seen ‘Heaven’s image double-stamped as man,
and noble,’ so unequivocally clear. * * * The band ceased playing when
the ladies left the table; the gentlemen closed up, conversation assumed
a merrier cast, coffee and _liqueurs_ were brought in when the wines
began to be circulated more slowly, and at eleven there was a general
move to the drawing-room. Cards, tea, music, filled up the time till
twelve, and then the ladies took their departure, and the gentlemen sat
down to supper. I got to bed somewhere about two o’clock; and thus ended
an evening, which I had anticipated as stiff and embarrassing, but which
is marked in my tablets as one of the most social and kindly I have had
the good fortune to record on my travels.
“I arose late in the morning, and found the large party already
assembled about the breakfast table. I was struck on entering, with the
different air of the room. The deep windows opening out upon the park,
had the effect of sombre landscapes in oaken frames; the troops of
liveried servants, the glitter of plate, the music, that had contributed
to the splendour of the scene the night before, were gone. The Duke sat
laughing at the head of the table, with a newspaper in his hand, dressed
in a coarse shooting-jacket and coloured cravat; the Duchess was in a
plain morning dress and cap of the simplest character; and the high-born
women about the table, whom I had left glittering with jewels, and
dressed in all the attractions of fashion, appeared in the simplest
_coiffure_ and a toilet of studied plainness. The ten or twelve noblemen
present were engrossed with their letters or newspapers over tea and
toast,--and in them, perhaps, the transformation was still greater. The
_soigné_ man of fashion of the night before, faultless in costume and
distinguished in his appearance--in the full force of the term--was
enveloped now in a coat of fustian, with a coarse waistcoat of plaid, a
gingham cravat, and hob-nailed shoes, for shooting; and in place of the
gay hilarity of the supper-table, wore a face of calm indifference, and
eat his breakfast, and read the paper in a rarely broken silence. I
wondered as I looked about me, what would be the impression of many
people in my own country, could they look in upon that plain party,
aware that it was composed of the proudest nobility and the highest
fashion of England.
“Breakfast in England is a confidential and unceremonious hour, and
servants are generally dispensed with. This is to me, I confess, an
advantage it has over every other meal. I detest eating with twenty tall
fellows standing opposite, whose business it is to watch me. The coffee
and tea were on the table, with toast, muffins, oat-cakes, marmalade,
jellies, fish, and all the paraphernalia of a Scotch breakfast; and on
the sideboard stood cold meats for those who liked them, and they were
expected to go to it and help themselves. Nothing could be more easy,
unceremonious, and affable, than the whole tone of the meal. One after
another rose and fell into groups in the windows, or walked up and down
the long room, and, with one or two others, I joined the duke at the
head of the table, who gave us some interesting particulars of the
salmon-fisheries of the Spey. The privilege of fishing the river within
his lands is bought of him at the pretty sum of eight thousand pounds
a-year.
“The ladies went off unaccompanied to their walks in the park and other
avocations; those bound for the covers, joined the gamekeepers, who were
waiting with their dogs in the leash at the stables; and some paired off
to the billiard-room. Still suffering from lameness, I declined all
invitations to the shooting parties, who started across the park, with
the dogs leaping about them in a frenzy of delight, and accepted the
duke’s kind offer of a pony phaeton to drive down to the kennels. The
duke’s breed, both of setters and hounds, is celebrated throughout the
kingdom. They occupy a spacious building in the centre of a wood, a
quadrangle enclosing a court, and large enough for a respectable
farm-house. The chief huntsman and his family, and perhaps a gamekeeper
or two, lodge on the premises, and the dogs are divided by palings
across the court. I was rather startled to be introduced into the same
enclosure with a dozen gigantic bloodhounds, as high as my breast, the
keeper’s whip in my hand, the only defence. I was not easier for the
man’s assertion, that, without it, they would ‘have the life out of me
in a crack.’ They came around me very quietly, and one immense fellow,
with a chest like a horse, and a head of the finest expression, stood up
and laid his paws on my shoulders, with the deliberation of a friend
about to favour me with some grave advice. One can scarce believe that
these noble creatures have not reason like ourselves. Those slender,
thoroughbred heads, large speaking eyes, and beautiful limbs and
graceful action, should be gifted with more than mere animal instinct.
The greyhounds were the beauties of the kennel, however; I never had
seen such perfect creatures. The setters were in the next division, and
really they were quite lovely. The rare tan and black dog of this race,
with his silky floss hair, intelligent muzzle, good-humoured face, and
caressing fondness, quite excited my admiration. There were thirty or
forty of these, old and young, and a friend of the duke’s would as soon
ask him for a church living, as for the present of one of them. The
former would be by much the smaller favour. Then there were terriers of
four or five breeds; of one family of which, long-haired, long-bodied,
short-legged, and perfectly white little wretches, the keeper seemed
particularly fond. * * * *
“The routine of Gordon Castle was what each one chose to make it.
Between breakfast and lunch, the ladies were generally invisible, and
the gentlemen rode or shot, or played billiards, or kept in their rooms.
At two o’clock, a dish or two of hot game and a profusion of cold meats
were set on the small tables in the dining-room, and every body came in
for a kind of lounging half-meal, which occupied perhaps an hour. Thence
all adjourned to the drawing-room, under the windows of which were drawn
up carriages of all descriptions, with grooms, outriders, footmen, and
saddle-horses for gentlemen and ladies. Parties were then made up for
driving or riding, and from a pony-chaise to a phaeton-and-four, there
was no class of vehicle which was not at your disposal. In ten minutes
the carriages were usually all filled, and away they flew, some to the
banks of the Spey, or the sea-side, some to the drives in the park, and
with the delightful consciousness, that, speed where you would, the
horizon scarce limited the possession of your host, and you were
everywhere at home. The ornamental gates flying open at your approach,
miles distant from the castle; the herds of red-deer trooping away from
the sound of wheels in the silent park; the stately pheasants feeding
tamely in the immense preserves; the hares scarcely troubling themselves
to get out of the length of the whip; the stalking gamekeepers lifting
their hats in the dark recesses of the forest,--there was something in
this, perpetually reminding you of privileges; which, as a novelty, was
far from disagreeable. I could not at the time bring myself to feel,
what perhaps would be more poetical and republican, that a ride in the
wild and unfenced forest of my own country would have been more to my
taste.
“The second afternoon of my arrival, I took a seat in the carriage with
Lord A., and we followed the duchess, who drove herself in a
pony-chaise, to visit a school on the estate. Attached to a small gothic
chapel, a five minutes’ drive from the castle, stood a building in the
same style, appropriated to the instruction of the children of the
duke’s tenantry. There were a hundred and thirty little creatures, from
two years to five or six, and like all infant schools, in these days of
improved education, it was an interesting and affecting sight. The last
one I had been in, was at Athens, and though I missed here the dark eyes
and Grecian faces of the Ægean, I saw health and beauty, of a kind
which stirred up more images of home, and promised, perhaps, more for
the future. * * * *
“The number at the dinner-table of Gordon Castle was seldom less than
thirty; but the company was continually varied by departures and
arrivals. No sensation was made by either one or the other. A
travelling-carriage dashed up to the door, was disburdened of its load,
and drove round to the stables, and the question was seldom asked, ‘Who
is arrived?’ You are sure to see at dinner--and an addition of half a
dozen to the party, made no perceptible difference in any thing.
Leave-takings were managed in the same quiet way. Adieus were made to
the duke and duchess, and to no one else, except he happened to
encounter the parting guest upon the staircase, or were more than a
common acquaintance. In short, in every way the _gêne_ of life seemed
weeded out, and if unhappiness or _ennui_ found its way into the castle,
it was introduced in the sufferer’s own bosom. For me, I gave myself up
to enjoyment with an _abandon_ I could not resist. With kindness and
courtesy in every look, the luxuries and comforts of a regal
establishment at my freest disposal; solitude when I pleased, company
when I pleased,--the whole visible horizon fenced in for the enjoyment
of a household, of which I was a temporary portion, and no enemy except
time and the gout, I felt as if I had been spirited into some castle of
felicity, and had not come by the royal mail-coach at all.”
This is one of the most perfect and graphic descriptions of English
aristocratical life in the country, which was ever written. It is,
indeed, on the highest and broadest scale, and is not to be equalled by
every country gentleman; but in kind and in degree, the same character
and spirit extend to all such life, and I have therefore taken the
liberty of transcribing Mr. Willis’s sketch as completely as my limits
would admit. Nothing, were a volume written on the subject, could bring
it more palpably and correctly before the mind of the reader; and I
think that if there be a perfection in human life, it is to be found, so
far as all the goods of providence and the easy elegances of society can
make it so, in the rural life of the English nobility and gentry.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV.
THE ROUTINE OF COUNTRY SPORTS.
In my last chapter I took a view of the variety given to rural life by
the annual visit to town: but if a gentleman have no desire so to vary
his existence; if he love the country too well to leave it at all, most
plentiful are the resources which offer themselves for pleasantly
speeding on the time. If he be attached merely to field sports, not a
moment of the whole year but he may fill up with his peculiar enjoyment.
Racing, hunting, coursing, shooting, fishing, all offer themselves to
his choice; and rural sports, as every thing else in English life, are
so systematized; every thing belonging to them is so exactly regulated;
all their necessary implements and accessories, are brought to such an
admirable pitch of perfection by the advancement of the arts, that the
pleasures of the sportsman are rendered complete, and are diffused over
every portion of the year. Field sports have long ceased to be followed
in that rude and promiscuous manner which they were when forests overrun
the greater part of Europe, and hunting was almost necessary to
existence. Parties of hunters no longer go out with dogs of various
kinds--greyhounds, hounds, spaniels, and terriers, all in leash, as our
ancestors frequently did, ready to slip them on any kind of game which
might present itself, and with bows also ready to make more sure of
their prey. We have no battues, such as are still to be found in some
parts of the continent, and which used to be the common mode of hunting
in the Highlands, when the beasts of a whole district were driven into a
small space, and subjected to a promiscuous slaughter; a scene such as
Taylor the water-poet describes himself as witnessing in the Braes of
Mar; nor such as those perpetrated by the King of Naples in Austria,
Bohemia, and Moravia, in which he killed 5 bears, 1820 boars, 1950 deer,
1145 does, 1625 roebucks, 1121 rabbits, 13 wolves, 17 badgers, 16,354
hares, 354 foxes, 15,350 pheasants, and 12,335 partridges. Such scenes
are not to be witnessed in this country. Every field sport is here
become a science. Hunting, coursing, shooting, each has its own season,
its well-defined bounds, its peculiar horses, dogs, and weapons. Our
horses and dogs, by long and anxious attention to the preservation of
their specific characters, and to the improvement of their breed, are
become pre-eminent, each in their own department. Our sporting nobility
and gentry have not contented themselves with becoming thoroughly
skilful in every thing relating to field diversions; but have many of
them communicated their knowledge through the press to their countrymen,
and have thus furnished our libraries with more practical information of
this kind than ever was possessed by any one country at any one time;
and contributed to make these pursuits as effective, elegant, and
attractive as possible. It is not my province to go into the details of
any particular sports; for them I refer the reader to Daniel, Beckford,
Col. Thornton, Sir John Sebright, Col. Hawker, Tom Oakleigh, Nimrod, and
the sporting magazines. My business is to shew how gentlemen may and do
spend their time in the country. And in the mere catalogue of
out-of-door sports, are there not racing, hunting, coursing, shooting,
angling? Hawking once was an elegant addition to this list; but that has
nearly fallen into disuse in this country, and may be said to exist only
in the practice of Sir John Sebright, and the grand falconer of England,
the Duke of St. Albans. Archery too, once the great boast of our
forests, and the constant attendant on the hunt, has, as a field
exercise, followed hawking. It has of late years been revived and
practised by the gentry as a graceful amusement, and an occasion for
assembling together at certain periods in the country; but as an adjunct
of the field sports it is past for ever. Racing, every one knows, is a
matter of intense interest with a great portion of the nobility, gentry,
and others; and those who delight in it, know where to find Newmarket,
Epsom, Ascot Heath, Doncaster, and other places, often to their cost:
almost every county and considerable town, has its course and annual
races. These, however, to the country gentleman, unless he be one whose
great and costly passion is for breeding and betting on race-horses, are
but occasional excitements: the rest run their round of seasons as
regularly as the seasons themselves; and place a lover of field sports
in the country at any point of the year, and one or more of them are
ready for his enjoyment. Is it winter? He has choice of all, except it
be angling. Hunting, coursing, shooting, are all in their full season.
Hunting, as I have said, is more confined in its range than it was
anciently; but it is more regular, less fatiguing, less savage in its
character, more complete in its practice and appointments. There is now
neither the boar, the bear, nor the wolf, to try the courage of our
youth, and stag and buck hunting may be considered as rare and almost
local amusements,--but we may quote the words of a great authority as to
the position which hunting occupies amongst the rural sports of England.
“There is certainly no country in the world, where the sport of hunting
on horseback is carried to such a height as in Great Britain at the
present day, and where the pleasures of a fox-chase are so well
understood, and conducted on such purely scientific principles. It is
considered the _beau idéal_ of hunting by those who pursue it. There can
be no doubt, that it is infinitely superior to stag-hunting, for the
real sportsman can only enjoy that chase, when the deer is sought for,
and found like other game which are pursued by hounds. In the case of
finding an out-lying fallow-deer, which is unharboured in this manner,
great sport is frequently afforded; but this is rarely to be met with in
Great Britain: so that fox-hunting is now the chief amusement of the
true British sportsman: and a noble one it is--the artifices and
dexterity employed by this lively, crafty animal, to avoid the dogs, are
worthy of our admiration, as he exhibits more devices for
self-preservation than any other beast of the chase. In many parts of
this and the sister island, hare-hunting is much followed, but
fox-hunters consider it as a sport only fit for women and old men,--but,
although it is less arduous than that of the fox-chase, there are charms
attached to it which compensate for the hard riding of the other.”
I do not enter here into the question of cruelty in this sport, nor into
the other question of injury resulting from it to crops and fences, on
which grounds many so strongly object to hunting, and on the former
ground, indeed, to all field sports. Lord Byron, for instance, thought
hunting a barbarous amusement, fit only for a barbarous country. It is
not my intention to undertake the defence of this old English sport from
the standing charge against it, we here have only to deal with it as a
feature of rural life; and though one cannot say much in praise of its
humanity, it cannot be denied that it is a pursuit of a vigorous and
exciting character. A fine field of hunters in their scarlet coats,
rushing over forest, heath, fence or stream, on noble steeds, and with a
pack of beautiful dogs in full cry, is a very picturesque and animating
spectacle.
Through the winter, then, up to the very approach of spring, hunting
offers whatever charms it possesses; pheasant, woodcock and snipe
shooting, in the woods and by the streams, are in all their glory. It is
the time for pursuing all manner of wild fowl, in fens and along the
sea-coast; and if any one would know what are the eager and adventurous
pleasures of that pursuit, let him join some old fowler for a week
amongst the reeds of Cambridge, Huntingdon, or Lincolnshire,--now laying
his traps and springes, now crouching amongst the green masses of flags
and other water plants, or crawling on hands and knees for a shot at
teal, widgeon, or wild duck; now visiting the decoys, or shooting right
and left amongst the rising and contorting snipes. Or let him read Col.
Hawker’s delightful description of swivel shooting on the coasts, the
mud-launchers and followers of the sea flocks by night. Those are sports
which require a spice of enthusiasm and love of adventure far above the
pitch of the ordinary sportsman.
When spring arrives, and warns the shooter to give rest to the
creatures of his pursuit, that they may pair, produce, and rear their
broods; as he lays down the gun, he can take up the angle. Many a keen
and devoted old sportsman, however, never knows when to lay down the
gun. Though he will no longer fire at game, he likes through the spring
and summer months to carry his gun on his arm through the woods, to
knock down what he calls vermin,--stoats, weazels, polecats, jays,
magpies, hawks, owls; all those creatures that destroy game, or their
young broods, or suck their eggs. He is fond of spying out the nests of
partridges and pheasants, and from time to time marking their progress.
It is a grand anticipative pleasure to him when, passing along the
furrow of the standing corn, his old pointer, or favourite spaniel
starts the young birds just able to take the wing, and he counts them
over with a silent exultation. He is fond of seeing to the training of
his young dogs, of selecting fresh ones, of putting his fowling-pieces
and all his shooting gear in order. There are some old sportsmen of my
acquaintance, who, during what they call this idle time, have made
collections of curious birds and small animals which might furnish some
facts to natural history. An old uncle of mine in Derbyshire, who has
shot away a fine estate, I scarcely ever recollect to have seen out of
doors without his gun. I saw him lately, when in that county, a feeble,
worn-out old man, just able to totter about, but still with the gun on
his arm. For those, however, who can find it in their hearts to lay
aside the gun at the prescribed time, and yet long for rural sports,
what can so delightfully fill up the spring and summer as the
fishing-rod? There is no rural art, except that of shooting, for which
modern science and invention have done so much as angling. Since Izaak
Walton gave such an impetus to this taste by his delicious old book, it
has gradually assumed a new and fascinating character. A host of
contrivances have been expended on fishing tackle. What splendid rods
for simple angling, trolling, or fly-fishing, are now offered to the
admiring eyes of the amateur! what a multitude of apparatus of one kind
or other! what silver fish and endless artificial flies Angling has
become widened and exalted in its sphere with the general expansion of
knowledge and the improvement of taste. It has associated itself with
the pleasures and refinements of literature and poetry. All those charms
which worthy Izaak threw round it, have continued to cling to it, and
others have grown up around them. The love of nature, the love of travel
have intertwined themselves with the love of angling. Angling has thence
become, as it were, a new and more attractive pursuit--a matter of taste
and science as well as of health and pleasure. It is found that it may
not only be followed by the tourist without diverting him from his
primal objects, but that it adds most essentially to the delights of a
summer excursion. Since Wordsworth and John Wilson set up their
“Angler’s Tent” on the banks of Wast-Water, “at the head of that wild
and solitary lake, which they had reached by the mountain-path that
passes Barn-Moor-Tarn from Eskdale,” making an angling excursion of
seven days amongst the mountains of Westmoreland, Lancashire, and
Cumberland, having “their tent, large panniers filled with its
furniture, provisions, etc., loaded upon horses, which, while the
anglers, who separated every morning, pursued each his own sport up the
torrents, were carried over the mountains to the appointed place, by
some lake or stream, where they were to meet again in the evening;” and
that solitary trade,
Mid rural peace in peacefulness pursued,
Through rocky glen, wild moor, and hanging wood,
White flowering meadow, and romantic glade;
since Sir Humphry Davy went angling and philosophising in the mountain
tarns, and along the trout and salmon streams not only of Scotland and
Ireland, but of France and Switzerland, the enthusiasm for angling has
grown into a grand and expansive passion. We have our “Anglers in
Wales,” our “Anglers in Ireland;” Stephen Oliver has flourished his
lines over the streams of the north, Jesse over the gentle and majestic
Thames. The only wonder is, that, as our countrymen walk to and fro
through all known regions of the earth, we do not hear of anglers in the
Danube--the Ister--the Indus--the Joliba,--of trolling in La Plata, and
fly-fishing in South Africa and Australia. All that will come in its own
good time: meanwhile let us remind our country friends of the further
blessings which await them, even should all the rapid streams of our
mountain rivers and rivulets, Loch Leven trout, Loch Fine herrings, and
salmon pulled flouncing from the crystal waters of the Teith or the
Shannon, to be crimped and grilled by most delicious art, satiate them
before the summer is over. The 12th of August approaches! the gun is
roused from its slumber--the dogs are howling in ecstasy on their
release from the kennel--the heather is burst into all its crimson
splendour on the moors and the mountains, and grouse-shooting is at hand
once more!
That sentence is enough to make a sportsman start to his feet if it were
but whispered to him in his deepest after-dinner doze. In “The Book of
the Seasons” I asserted that sportsmen felt the animating influence of
nature and its beauty in their pursuits. For that passage many have been
the gentle lectures of the tender-hearted; but that it was a true
passage has been shewn by the thanks which many sportsmen have given me
for that simple vindication, and by the repeated quotation of the whole
article in their books. That they do feel it, is plainly shewn in many
papers of the sporting magazines; but nowhere more vividly than in “The
Oakleigh Shooting Code.” If the unction with which the paper on
grouse-shooting is written in that book were more diffused through works
of the like nature, vain would be all arguments to check the love of
shooting. The feeling on this subject has been evidenced by the avidity
with which that part of the book has been quoted far and wide. But the
spirit of the picturesque is not more prominent in these chapters than
in the description of Oakleigh Hall, and of the “wide-ranging treeless
view of the smooth-turfed limestone hills, the white rocks breaking out
in patches, so characteristic of Derbyshire.”
But we are pausing on our way to the Highlands; and surely nothing can
be so inspiring and exciting in the whole circle of sporting scenes as a
trip to the moors and mountains of the north, in the height of
summer--in the beauty of summer weather, and in the full beauty of the
scenery itself. If the season is fine--the roads are dry--the walks are
dry--the bogs are become, many of them, passable, the heather is in full
bloom, the fresh air of the mountains, or the waters in sailing thither,
the rapid changes of scene, the novel aspects of life and nature in
progressing onward, by the carriage, the railway, the steamer, with all
their varying groups of tourists and pleasure-seekers, of men of
business and men of idleness, are full of enjoyment. To the man from the
rich monotonous Lowlands, from the large town, from the heart of the
metropolis perhaps, from the weary yoke of business, public or private,
of law, of college study, of parliament and committees, what can be more
penetrating and delicious than the breathing of the fresh buoyant air,
the pleasant flitting of the breeze, the dash of sunny waters, the
aspect of mountains and moors in all their shadow and gloom, or in their
brightness as they rise in their clear still beauty into the azure
heavens, or bask broad and brown in the noon-sun? There go the happy
sportsmen; seated on the deck of some fast-sailing steamer, with human
groups around them; they are fast approaching the “land of the mountain
and the flood.” They already seem to tread the elastic turf, to smell
the heather bloom, and the peat fire of the Highland hut; to climb the
moory hill, to hear the thunder of the linn, or pace the pebbly shore of
the birch-skirted lake. They have left dull scenes or dry studies
behind, and a volume of Walter Scott’s novels is in their hands, living
with all the character and traditions of the mountain-land before them.
Well then, is it not a blessed circumstance that our poets and romancers
have kindled the spirit of these things in the heart of our countrymen,
that such places lie within our own island, and that science has so
quickened our transit to them? Let us just note a few of the symptoms
which shew us that this memorable 12th of August is at hand. In the
market towns you see the country sportsman hastening along the streets,
paying quick visits to his gunsmith, ammunition dealer, tailor, draper,
etc. He is getting all his requisites together. His dogs are at his
heels. Then you see him already invested in his jacket and straw hat,
driving off in his gig, phaeton, or other carriage, with keeper or
companion, and perhaps a couple of dogs stowed away with him. You see
the keeper and the dog-cart on their way too. As you get northward these
signs thicken. In large towns, as Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow,
Edinburgh, you see keeper-like looking men, with pointers and setters
for sale tied up to some palisade, or lamp-post, at the corner of a
street. But woe to those who have to purchase dogs under such
circumstances. It is ten to one but they are grievously gulled; or if
they _should_ chance to stumble upon a tolerable dog, there is not time
for that mutual knowledge to grow up which should exist between the
sportsman and his companion of the field. He that sees beforehand his
trip to the hills, should beforehand have all in readiness: he who on a
summer ramble is smitten with a sudden desire of grouse-shooting, must
however, do the best he can.
When you pass into Scotland, the signals of the time grow more
conspicuous. In the newspapers, you see everywhere advertisements of
Highland tracts to be let as shooting-grounds. When you get into the
Highlands themselves, you find in all the inns maps of the neighbouring
estates, divided into shooting-grounds for letting. It is very probable
that the income derived from this source by the Highland proprietors
frequently far exceeds the rental of the same estates for the grazing of
sheep and cattle. The waters and the heaths seem to be the most
profitable property of a great part of the Highlands. Almost every
stream and loch is carefully preserved and let as a trout or salmon
fishery, many of them for enormous sums; and so far is this carried,
that sportsmen who are not inclined to pay eighty or a hundred pounds
a-year for a shooting ground, complain that Ireland is the only country
now for shooting in any degree of freedom. Sometimes several gentlemen
join at a shooting ground; and it is a picturesque sight to see them,
and their dogs and keepers, drawing towards their particular locations
as the day approaches.
On the 10th of August, 1836, we sailed up the Grand Caledonian Canal
from Fort William to Inverness in the steam-packet with a large party of
these gentlemen. Of their number, principally military men--
Captains, and colonels, and men at arms;
some notion may be formed from the fact that we had on board upwards of
seventy dogs, mostly beautiful setters; a perfect pyramid of gun-cases
was piled on the deck, and dog-carts and keepers completed the scene.
One of the singular features of English life at the present moment is
the swarming of summer tourists in all interesting quarters. In these
Highland regions the consequent effect is often truly ludicrous. Into
one miserable village, or one poor solitary inn, pour, day after day,
the summer through, from seventy to a hundred people. The impossibility
of such a place accommodating such a company is the first thing which
strikes every one. The moment, therefore, that the vessel touches the
quay, out rushes the whole throng, and a race commences to the house or
village to secure beds for the night. Such is the impetus of the rush
that the first arrivers are frequently driven by the “pressure from
without” up the stairs to the very roof. A scene of the most laughable
confusion is exhibited. All are clamouring for beds; nobody can be heard
or attended to; and generally all who can, burst into rooms which are
not locked up, and take forcible possession. Such scenes, any one who
has gone up this canal, or to the Western Isles must have seen,--at
Oban, at Tobermory, and at Inverness, which last place boasts three
inns, and where, on our arrival with a hundred fellow-passengers, we
found three hundred others had just landed from a London steamer! Our
sportsmen, however, who were well aware of the statistics of the north,
had written beforehand, and secured bed-rooms at all the
sleeping-places, which were duly locked up against their arrival, and
they sate very composedly to witness the race of worse-informed mortals.
On this occasion a very characteristic contrast was presented between
the sportsmen and a number of students who were on board at the time.
These students, many of whom spend the college recess in pedestrianizing
through the Highlands, have a character almost as peculiar to themselves
as the German Bürschen. In twos and threes, with their knapsacks on
their backs, they may be seen rambling on, wherever there is fine
scenery or spots of note to be visited. They step on board a packet at
one place, and go off at another, steering away into the hills; ready to
take up their quarters at such abode as may offer--the road-side inn or
the smoky hut of the Gael. Wherever you see them, they are all curiosity
and enthusiasm; all on fire with the sublime and beautiful--athirst for
knowledge; historical, antiquarian, traditionary, botanical,
geological--anything in the shape of knowledge. They are the first to
climb the hill, to reach the waterfall, to crowd round every spot of
tragic interest; everywhere they go agog with imagination, and
everywhere they lament that they do not feel adequately, the power, and
beauty, and grandeur of the objects of their attention. Such a group we
had on board. On the other hand, the sportsmen had but one object,
which absorbed all their interests and faculties. They cared not at that
moment for the Fall of Foyers, saw scarcely the splendid mountains and
glens around. Their souls were in the brown hills of their shooting
grounds--the fever of the 12th of August was upon them. They kept
together, talking of guns, dogs, grouse, roebucks; all their
conversation was larded and illustrated with the phraseology of their
own favourite pursuit. They were, many of them, clad in a close jacket
and trousers of shepherd’s tartan, with their telescope slung at their
backs. They seemed to look on the students as so many hair-brained and
romantic striplings--the students on them, as so many creatures of the
chase. As we proceeded, the fiery Nimrods were, one after another, put
out at the opening of beautiful glens, and at the foot of wild mountains
where their huts lay, and the vessel received a considerable accession
of silence by the departure of their keepers, who, having found a
Highland piper on board, got up a dance in the steerage cabin, and kept
that end of the vessel pretty well alive both day and night. Having thus
brought them to their grounds, there can be no better narrator of what
passes there than Thomas Oakleigh.
“On the 11th of August the sportsman arrives at his shooting quarters;
probably some isolated tavern, ‘old as the hills,’--if such a house as
the grouse-shooter occasionally locates himself in, in the northern or
midland counties of England, or in Scotland, where oatcake and peat
supply the place of bread and fuel, can be called a tavern. The place,
humble in character, has been the immemorial resort of sportsmen in
August, although during the rest of the year, sometimes many months
elapse ere a customer, save some itinerant salesman calling for his mug
of beer, ‘darkens the door.’ * * * At the house will be found all the
keepers, and tenters, and poachers, and young men from the country
round, assembled, amounting in the whole to not more than some eight or
ten persons, all _knowing ones_, each anxious to display his knowledge
of the number and locality of the broods, but each differing, wide as
the poles asunder, in his statement, except on four points, in which all
are agreed, viz.--_That the hatching season has been finer than was ever
known before! That the broods are larger and more numerous than were
ever counted before! That the birds are heavier and stronger than were
ever seen before! and that they will, on the following day, lie better
than they ever did on any previous opening day in the recollection of
the oldest person present!_ Each successive season being, in their idea,
more propitious than its precursor! Anxiety and expectation are now
arrived at a climax. At night, the blithe and jocund peasantry mingle
with their superiors: their pursuits are for once something akin. In the
field-sports they can sympathize together: the peasant and the peer
associate; the plough-boy and the squire talk familiarly together; it is
the privilege of the former, his prescriptive right. The circling cup,
and lighthearted and hilarious laugh promiscuously go round! This night
distinctions are unknown--and would that it were oftener so! * * * Long
before midnight, all who can obtain beds retire, though not an eye is
drowsy. The retainers lie on sofas, elbow-chairs, or whatever else
presents itself; but sleep is almost a stranger during the night. The
soldier before battle, is not more anxious as to the result of the
morrow, than is the sportsman on the night of the 11th of August!
Morning dawns, ‘and heavily with _mists_ comes on the day.’ The
occupiers of benches and chairs are first on the alert: the landlady is
called; breakfast is prepared--the dogs are looked at; all is tumult,
noise, and confusion. Reckless must he be that can rest longer in
bed--‘the cootie moor-cocks crowsely crow;’ breakfast is hastily
dispatched--next is heard the howling and yelping of dogs, the cracking
of whips, the snapping of locks, the charging, and flashing, and firing
of guns, and every other note of preparation. The march is sounded, and
away they wind for the heather and hills, true _peep-o’-day boys_, far,
far from the busy, money-getting world, to breathe empyreal air; to
enjoy a sport that should be monopolized by princes--if, indeed, princes
could be found deserving of such a monopoly! Every person the shooter
meets with seems this day to have thrown off his sordid cloak, and to be
divested of those meaner passions which render life miserable: all are
now warm, open-hearted, frank, sincere, and obliging. The sportsman’s
shooting-dress is a sibboleth, which introduces him alike to his
superiors, to his fellows, and his inferiors: an acquaintance is formed
at first sight: there are no distant looks, no coldness, no outpouring
of arrogance, or avarice, or pride; but a happy rivalry exists, to
eclipse each other in the number and size of birds killed--the chief
object of emulation being to kill the finest old cock. Let us be
understood to express that this happy state of things subsists only so
long as the shooter’s peregrinations are circumscribed by the limits of
his own or friend’s manor. The moment he becomes a borderer, a very
different reception awaits him! To the sportsman in training, full of
health and strength, and well appointed, it is of little consequence
whether there be game or not. The inspiriting character of the sport,
and the wild beauty of the scenery, so different from what he is
elsewhere in the habit of contemplating, hold out a charm that dispels
fatigue! He feels not the drudgery. To him the hills are lovely in every
aspect; whether beneath a hot, autumnal sun, with not a cloud to
intercept the torrid beam, or beneath the dark canopy of thunder-clouds;
whether in the frosty morn or in the dewy eve--whether, when through the
clear atmosphere he surveys, as it were in a map, the countries that lie
stretched around and beneath him, or when he wanders darkly on, amidst
eternal mists that roll continuously past him--still a charm pervades
the hills. The sun shines brighter, and the storm rages more furiously
than in the valleys! The very sterility pleases: and to him who has been
brought thither by the rapid means of travelling now adopted, from some
bustling mart of trade or vortex of fashion, the novelty of loneliness
is agreeably exciting! The stillness that reigns around is as wonderful
to him as the solidity of land to the stranded sailor! Scarcely is there
a change of scene--stillness and solitude, hill and ravine, sky and
heather, everywhere magnificent, the outline everywhere bold, and where
the view terminates amid rocks and crags, frequently sublime! At
noonday, near some rocky summit, perchance on the shepherd’s stone, the
shooter seats himself, and shares his last sandwich with his panting
dogs. We will suppose him to be on the boundary of the muir-lands: on
one hand he sees an unbounded expanse of heathery hills, by no means
monotonous if he will look upon them with the eye of a painter, for
there is every shade of yellow, green, brown, and purple,--the last is
the prevailing colour at this season, the heather being in bloom: nor
are the hills monotonous, if he looks at them with the eye of a
sportsman, for by this time (we suppose him to have been shooting all
the morning) he will have performed many feats, or at any rate will have
met with several adventures, and the ground before him is the field of
his fame. He now looks with interest on many a rock, and cliff, and
hill, which lately appeared but as one of so many ‘crags, knolls, and
mounds confusedly hurled!’ He contemplates the site of his achievements,
as a general surveys a field of battle during an interval of strife; the
experience of the morning has taught him a lesson, and he plans a fresh
campaign for the afternoon, or the morrow, or probably the next season,
should the same hills be again destined to be the scene of his exploits.
The shooter looks down on the other hand from his rocky summit, and, in
the bright relief, through the white rents in the clouds, sees the
far-off meadows and hamlets, the woods, the rivers, and the lake. He
rises, and renews his task. The invigorating influence of the bracing
wind on the heights, lends the sportsman additional strength--he puts
forth every effort, every nerve is strained--he feels an artificial glow
after nature is exhausted, and returns to the cot where he had
previously spent a sleepless night, to enjoy his glass of grog, and such
a _snooze_ as the citizen never knew!”
This is a graphic and true picture of the outset of grouse-shooting; but
it is but one amongst many of the exciting situations and picturesque
positions which this fine sport presents. There is a wide difference,
too, between the grouse-shooting of the north of England and of the
Highlands. On the English moors, the majority of shooters who assemble
there, are the friends or acquaintances of the proprietors, or of their
friends and acquaintances, who have received invitations, or procured
the favour to shoot for a day or two at the opening of the season. The
outbreak on the morning of the 12th, is therefore proportionably
multitudinous and bustling. The throng of the people on the preceding
evening, crowded into the inns and cottages in the neighbourhood where
the best shooting lies, is often amazing. Many sportsmen, who on other
occasions would think scorn to enter such a hovel, or jostle in such a
crowd, may be seen waiting in patient endurance, in a situation in which
a beggar would not envy them. Others will be seen stretched on their
cloaks on the floor, while their dogs are occupying their beds, or the
soft bottom of a huge old chair; their great anxiety being, to have
their dogs fresh and able for the coming day. At the faintest peep of
dawn, which is about three o’clock at that season, loud is the sound of
guns on all sides, going off farther and farther in the distance. At
noon, on some picturesque and breezy hill, you may see a large party
congregated to luncheon, where provisions and drink have been conveyed
by appointment. There, ten or a dozen sportsmen seated on the ground,
all warm in body and mind--their dogs watching eagerly for their share
of the feast, which is thrown them with liberal hand--their guns reared
against some rock--their game thrown picturesquely on the moorland
turf--Flibbertigibbets, with their asses who have brought up the baskets
of provisions, the keg of beer, and bottles of porter, are running about
and acting the waiters in a style of genuine originality; while keepers
and markers are at once lunching and keeping an eye on the dogs, lest
they are too troublesome to their masters; who are all talking together
with inconceivable ardour of their individual achievements. The
situation, the mixture of men and animals, of personages and costumes,
all go to make up a striking picture. On the English moorlands, however,
grouse-shooting is but as it were a brilliant and passing flash. As the
enjoyment of the sport is generally a matter of grace and friendship,
and is sought by numbers who can only devote to the excursion, at the
best, a few days, it is a scene of animation and havoc for a week or ten
days, and then its glory is over. During this time, however, the keepers
on many estates make a rich harvest, by presents from gentlemen for
attendance and guidance to the best haunts of the game--by the loan of
dogs at good interest to such as have not come well provided, or have
met with accidents, or whose dogs, as is sometimes the case, unused to
this kind of sport and scenery, have bolted and disappeared at the first
general discharge of guns; and by furnishing, _sub rosâ_, grouse at a
guinea a brace to certain luckless braggadocios, who have boastingly
promised to various friends at home plenty of game from the moors; and
have not been able to ruffle a single feather! In the Highlands the
scene is different. The grounds are more generally rented by individuals
or parties; they are wider and wilder, and both from their extent and
distance from the populous districts of England are more thinly
scattered with shooters. There, some of the sportsmen take their
families to their cottages on their shooting-ground, and on which they
have probably bestowed some trouble and expense, to render them
sufficiently comfortable and convenient for a few months’ occasional
summer sojourn, and what in nature can afford a more delicious change
from the ordinary course and place of life? Up far amongst the wild
mountains and moorlands, amid every fresh and magnificent object--amid
fairyland glens of birch and hills of pine, the sight of crystal, rapid,
sunny streams, and the sound of waterfalls, in the lands of strange and
startling traditions. To intelligent children full of the enjoyment of
life and healthful curiosity, in such scenery every thing is wonderful
and delightful; to ladies of taste, such a life for a brief season must
be equally pleasant. There are some ladies, indeed, of the highest rank,
who are in the regular habit of spending a certain portion of every year
in the Highlands; and one in particular, of ducal rank, who at that
season rambles far and wide amongst the cottages and the beautiful
scenery of her native hills, telling her daughters, that if they there
indulge in English luxuries, they must prepare them themselves,--such is
the simplicity of her mountain residence and establishment; and they
take their Cook’s Oracle, and wonderfully enjoy the change. The language
and costume of the inhabitants are those of a foreign country; every
object has its novelty, and the little elegancies of books, music, and
furniture, which can be conveyed to such an abode, strike all the more
from the stern nature without. Then there is the finest fishing in the
lochs and mountain-streams, the most delightful sailing in many places,
and in the woods there are the shy roebuck and sometimes the red-deer to
be pursued. The grouse and black-cock shooting season is, therefore,
longer and steadier there; but the full perfection of its enjoyment is
to be found, perhaps, after all, only by the happy mortal who makes one
of the select party collected at one of the great Highland houses of the
aristocracy, where the best shooting, every requisite of horses, dogs,
attendants, etc., are furnished--and where, after the fatigues of the
day, the sportsman returns to his own clean room, to an excellent
dinner, music, and refined society. But, amid all these seductions,
nothing will make the thorough English sportsman forget the first of
September. Back he comes, and enters on that regular succession of
partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe, and wild-fowl shooting, of hunting
and coursing, which diversify and fill up the autumn and winter of
English rural life. To these pleasures then we leave him.
A WORD WITH THE TOO SENSITIVE.
I have not attempted to defend the hunter, the courser, or even the
shooter, in the preceding chapter, from the charge of cruelty which is
perpetually directed against them--they are a sturdy, and now a very
intelligent people; often numbering amongst them many of our principal
senators, authors, and men of taste, and very capable of vindicating
themselves; but I must enact the shield-bearer for a moment, for that
very worthy and much-abused old man, Izaak Walton, and the craft which
he has made so fashionable. Spite even of Lord Byron’s jingle about the
hook and gullet, and a stout fish to pull it, they may say what they
will of the old man’s cruelty and inconsistency--the death of a worm, a
frog, or a fish, is the height of his infliction, and what is that to
the ten thousand deaths of cattle, sheep, lambs, fish, and fowl of all
kinds, that are daily perpetrated for the sustenance of these same
squeamish cavillers! They remind me of a delicate lady, at whose house I
was one day, and on passing the kitchen door at ten in the morning, saw
a turkey suspended by its heels, and bleeding from its bill, drop by
drop. Supposing it was just in its last struggles from a recent
death-wound, I passed on, and found the lady lying on her sofa
overwhelmed in tears over a most touching story. I was charmed with her
sensibility; and the very delightful conversation which I held with her,
only heightened my opinion of the goodness of her heart. On accidentally
passing by the same kitchen door in the afternoon, six hours afterwards,
I beheld, to my astonishment, the same turkey suspended from the same
nail, still bleeding, drop by drop, and still giving an occasional
flutter with its wings! Hastening to the kitchen, I inquired of the
cook, if she knew that the turkey was not dead. “O yes, sir,” she
replied, “it won’t be dead, may-happen, these two hours. We always kill
turkeys that way, it so improves their colour; they have a vein opened
under the tongue, and only bleed a drop at a time!” “And does your
mistress know of this your mode of killing turkeys?” “O yes, bless you
sir, it’s our regular way; missis often sees ’em as she goes to the
gardens--and she says sometimes, ‘Poor things! I don’t like to see ’em,
Betty; I wish you would hang them where I should not see ’em!’” I was
sick! I was dizzy! It was the hour of dinner, but I walked quietly away,
And ne’er repassed that _bloody_ threshold more!
I say, what is Izaak Walton’s cruelty to this, and to many another such
perpetration on the part of the tender and sentimental? What is it to
the grinding and oppression of the poor that is every day going on in
society,--to the driving of wheels and the urging of steam-engines,
matched against whose iron power thousands daily waste their vital
energies? What is it to the laying on of burdens of expense and trouble
by the exactions of law, of divinity, of custom,--burdens grievous to be
borne, and which they who impose them, will not so much as touch with
one of their little fingers?
They sit at home and turn an easy wheel,
And set sharp racks to work to pinch and peel.--_John Keats._
These things are done and suffered by human beings, and then go the very
doers of these things, and cry out mightily against the angler for
pricking the gristle of a fish’s mouth!
I do not mean to advocate cruelty--far from it! I would have all men as
gentle and humane as possible; nor do I argue that because the world is
full of cruelty, it is any reason that more cruelty should be tolerated:
but I mean to say, that it is a reason why there should not be so much
permission to the greater evils, and so much clamour against the less.
Is there more suffering caused by angling than by taking fishes by the
net? Not a thousandth,--not a ten thousandth part! Where one fish is
taken with a hook, it may be safely said that a thousand are taken with
the net: for daily are the seas, lakes, and rivers swept with nets; and
cod, haddock, halibut, salmon, crabs, lobsters, and every species of
fish that supplies our markets, are gathered in thousands and ten
thousands--to say nothing of herrings and pilchards by millions. Over
these there is no lamentation; and yet their sufferings are as
great--for the suffering does not consist so much in the momentary
puncture of a hook, as in the dying for lack of their native element.
Then go these tender-hearted creatures and feast upon turtles that have
come long voyages nailed to the decks of ships in living agonies; upon
crabs, lobsters, prawns, and shrimps, that have been scalded to death;
and thrust oysters alive into fires; and fry living eels in pans, and
curse poor anglers before their gods for cruel monsters, and bless their
own souls for pity and goodness, forgetting all the fish-torments they
have inflicted!
“Ay, but”--they turn round upon you suddenly with what they deem a
decisive and unanswerable argument--“Ay, but they cannot approve of
making the miseries of sentient creatures a pleasure.” What! is there no
pleasure in feasting upon crabs that have been scalded, and eels that
have been fried alive? In sucking the juices of an oyster, that has
gaped in fiery agony between the bars of your kitchen grate? But the
whole argument is a sophism and a fallacy. Nobody _does_ seek a
pleasure, or make an amusement of the misery of a living creature. The
pleasure is in the pursuit of an object, and the art and activity by
which a wild creature is captured, and in all those concomitants of
pleasant scenery and pleasant seasons that enter into the enjoyment of
rural sports;--the _suffering_ is only the _casual adjunct_, which you
would spare to your victim if you could, and which any humane man will
make as small as possible. And over what, after all, do these very
sensitive persons lament? Over the momentary pang of a creature, which
forms but one atom in a living series, every individual of which is both
pursuing and pursued, is preying, or is preyed upon. The fish is eagerly
pursuing the fly, one fish is pursuing the other, and so it is through
the whole chain of living things; and this is the order and system
established by the very centre and principle of love, by the beneficent
Creator of all life. The too sensitively humane, will again
exclaim--“Yes, this is right in the inferior animals: it is their
nature, and they only follow the impulse which their Maker has given
them.” True; but what is right in them, is equally right in man;--the
argument applies with double force in his case. For, is there no such
impulse implanted in him? Let every sportsman answer it; let the history
of the world answer it; let the heart of every nine-tenths of the human
race answer it. Yes, the very fact that we do pursue such sports, and
enjoy them, is an irrefragable answer. The principle of chase and taking
of prey, which is impressed on almost all living things, from the
minutest insect to the lion of the African desert, is impressed with
double force on man. By the strong dictates of our nature, by the very
words of the Holy Scriptures, every creature is given us for food; our
dominion over them, is made absolute. The amiable Cowper asserted that
dogs would not pursue game, if they were not taught to do so. We admit
the excellent nature of the man, but every day proves that, in this
instance, he was talking beyond his knowledge. Every one who knows
anything of dogs, knows, that if you bring them up in a town, and keep
them away from the habits of their own class to their full growth, the
moment they get into the country they will pursue each their peculiar
game, with the utmost avidity, and after their own manner. There is
then, unquestionably, an instinctive propensity in one animal to prey
upon another--in man pre-eminently so--and it is not the work of wisdom
to quench this tendency, but to follow it with all possible gentleness
and humanity.
CHAPTER V.
SCIENTIFIC FARMING.
Res rustica, sine dubitatione, proxima, et quasi consanguinea
Sapientiæ est.
_Columella De Re Rustica._
Oh, blessed, who drinks the bliss that Hymen yields,
And plucks life’s roses in his quiet fields.--_Ebenezer Elliot._
There may be a difference of opinion as to the strict utility or wisdom
of the pursuits noticed in the last chapter;--of the excellence and
rationality of those which form the subject of this, there can be none.
Nothing can be more consonant to nature, nothing more delightful,
nothing more beneficial to the country, or more worthy of any man, than
the Georgical occupations which form so prominent a feature in the rural
life of England. Whether a country gentleman seek profit or pleasure in
them, he can, at any time, find them. While he is increasing the value
of his estate, he is in the midst of health, peace, and a series of
operations which have now become purely scientific, and have called in
to their accomplishment various other sciences and arts. In every age of
the world agricultural pursuits have formed the delight of the greatest
nations and the noblest men. Some of the most illustrious kings and
prophets of Israel were taken from the fold or the plough. David and
Elisha are great names in the history of rural affairs. King Uzziah
“built towers in the desert, and digged many wells, for he had much
cattle both in the low country and in the plains; husbandmen also, and
vinedressers in the mountains, and in Carmel, for he loved husbandry.”
How delightful are the associations which the literature of Greece and
Rome has thrown around country affairs! Homer, Hesiod, and
Theocritus--how elysian are the glimpses they give us into rural life!
how simple, how peaceful, how picturesque! Laertes, that venerable old
monarch, pruning his vines, and fetching young stocks from the woods for
his fences. Eumeus, at his rustic lodge, entertaining his prince and his
king. Hesiod himself, wandering at the feet of Helicon, less impressed
with the sublimity of the poet than with the spirit of the husbandman!
He shews us the very infancy of agriculture:
Forget not when you sow the grain, to mind
That a boy follows with a rake behind;
And strictly charge him, as you drive, with care
The seeds to cover, and the birds to scare.
_Works and Days_, B. 2.
The harrow, an implement well known to King David, for he put the
subjected Ammonites under it, was unknown then in Greece! They _raked_
in the grain. That was but the second stage in the progress of tillage;
the first undoubtedly being that in which their plough was a pointed
stick, and their harrow a bush; as the most ancient drawing of hay-forks
shews that they were forked sticks cut from the thicket. But to leave
those primitive times of Greece,--there is no nation that at once
acquired so vast a military renown and yet retained such a passion for
the peaceful pursuits of agriculture as Rome. Nothing is so soon
familiarized to the mind of the school-boy as the fact of their
generals, dictators, and emperors tilling their own lands--leaving them
with reluctance for state honours, and retiring to them with gladness to
end their days in meditative tranquillity. Cicero tells us that couriers
were first introduced by them, to run between the capitol and their
farms, that they themselves might leave them only on most important
occasions. Almost every one of their writers on rural affairs, whose
works have reached us, were men of distinction in the state. Varro was
consul; Cato, the most remarkable man of his time, filled the highest
offices; Columella and Palladius were men of note; and Pliny, a
patrician officer, was governor of Spain. But what is more remarkable
even is, that such men as Virgil, Horace, and Cicero, men of
imaginative genius, and so involved in court life, or the business of
government, should be such passionate lovers of rural concerns. Everyone
knows how their writings overflow with the praises of country life, and
what delight they took in their farms and villas. Cicero seems as though
he could never have done with telling us of the pleasure he took in
farming. “I might expatiate,” he says, “on the beauty of verdant groves
and meadows, on the charming aspects of vineyards and olive-yards, but
to say all in one word, there cannot be a more pleasing, or a more
profitable scene than that of a well-cultivated farm. In my opinion,
indeed, no kind of occupation is more fraught with happiness, not only
as the business of husbandry is of singular utility to mankind, but, as
I have said, being attended with its own peculiar pleasures. I will add
too, as a further recommendation, and let it restore me to the good
graces of the voluptuous, that it supplies both the table and the altar
with the greatest variety and abundance. Accordingly, the magazines of
the skilful and industrious farmer are plentifully stored with wine and
oil, with milk, cheese, and honey; as his yards abound with poultry, and
his fields with flocks and herds of kids, lambs, and porkets. The garden
also furnishes him with an additional source of delicacies, in allusion
to which the farmers pleasantly call a certain piece of ground allotted
to that particular use, their _dessert_. I must not omit, likewise, that
in the intervals of their more important business, and in order to
heighten the relish of the rest, the sports of the field claim a share
of their amusements. * * * Of country occupations I profess myself a
warm admirer. They are pleasures perfectly consistent with every degree
of advanced years, as they approach the nearest of all others to those
of the purely philosophical kind. They are derived from observing the
nature and properties of their own earth, which yields a ready obedience
to the cultivator’s industry, and returns with interest what he deposits
in her charge.”--_De Senectute._
He then goes on to tell us what delight he took in the cultivation of
the vine; in watching the springing and progress of corn; the green
blade pushing forth, shooting into a knotted stem, nourished and
supported by the fibres of the root, terminated in the ear in which the
grain is lodged in regular order, and defended from the depredations of
birds by its bearded spikes. He tells us that he could name numbers of
his most distinguished friends and neighbours, and some of them at very
advanced ages, who take such interest in all that is going on at their
farms, that they will be present at every important agricultural
operation--many of them engaged in improvements of which they will see
neither the benefit nor the end. “And what,” says he, “do these noble
husbandmen, when they are asked for what purpose they dig and plant,
reply,--‘In obedience to the immortal gods, by whose bountiful
providence we received these fields from our ancestors, and whose will
it is that we should deliver them down with improvement to posterity!’”
And this generous and high sense of duty it was which animated the
Romans during the better portion of their republic, and kept alive their
virtue and their simplicity of life, so far as to give them power to
despise wealth, and to command the fortunes of other men. Cicero is
delighted with this noble principle, and he reverts with enthusiasm to
the picture of Manlius Curius, who, after having conquered the Samnites,
the Sabines, and even Pyrrhus himself, passed the honourable remainder
of his age in cultivating his farm. He adds, “I can never behold his
villa without reflecting with the highest degree of admiration both on
the singular moderation of his mind, and the general simplicity of the
age in which he flourished. Here it was, while sitting by his fireside,
that he nobly rejected the gold which was offered him on the part of the
Samnites, and rejected it with this memorable saying, ‘that he placed
his glory, not on the abundance of his own wealth, but in commanding
those amongst whom it abounded.’” With equal exultation he refers to the
enthusiasm into which Xenophon in his treatise of ŒCONOMICS breaks forth
in the praise of agriculture, and relates the interview of Lysander, the
Spartan ambassador, with Cyrus the younger, as told by Socrates to his
friend Critobulus, in which Cyrus assures Lysander that all the trees,
shrubs, etc., which he admired in his garden, were planted by his own
hand.
But if such were the charms which agriculture had for the Roman
nobility, how much greater ought it to possess for the nobles and
gentlemen of England! Amid all the advantages and recreations which have
been pointed out in the preceding chapters as surrounding the country
life of modern England, that of scientific farming is certainly one of
the greatest. It is a pursuit full of interest and variety, at once
natural, philosophical, and dignified. It is difficult to imagine a man
of wealth and education more usefully or honourably employed than in
directing the culture and improvement of his estate. Agriculture is now
become, indeed, as Cicero termed it in his day, “the nearest of all
employments to the purely philosophical kind.” It is a science which
requires a first-rate education to prosecute it to its full capability,
to make the other arts and sciences of modern times bear upon it, and
co-operate with it, so as to add something to its progression, or even
to apply beneficially the knowledge of its already established
principles and practices.[1] It is no longer an occupation which
requires a man to forego the refined pleasures of society, to bury
himself amid woods and wildernesses in some obscure hamlet far from the
enjoyments and intelligence of the world. As we have already seen,
locate himself where he will in these islands, the arts, the elegances,
the news and knowledge of civilized life, will penetrate to him by swift
agencies, and give him all the real advantages of the city in the peace
and fulness of his retirement. And what a noble art is agriculture now
become! Look at the manner it is now practised by the most skilful of
its professors. Let any one just turn over the leaves of Mr. Loudon’s
Encyclopædia of Agriculture, and trace the progress of its implements
only, from the plough of the ancients in the shape of a mere pick, to
the almost endless machines which the active brains of men and their
advancing knowledge of mechanics have given to the scientific farmer.
Let any one turn to the list of engravings of farming apparatus in the
same excellent work, amounting to about 300, and he will obtain some
idea of the amount of science and invention now devoted to the use of
the agriculturist. There are no men who have availed themselves of the
progress of the arts and of general knowledge more than they. Mechanics,
chemistry, hydraulics, steam, all have been seized upon, to develope the
principles, or facilitate the operations of agriculture. Within the
last century the strides which have been made in this interesting
department of knowledge are admirable. The Netherlands may be said to
have been the mother of our modern agriculture--Scotland its nurse.
Tull’s system of horse-hoeing and drill husbandry has been introduced by
Dawson, and has brought after it a numerous train of drills,
dibbling-machines, horse-hoes, ploughs, rollers, scufflers, scarifiers,
watering-machines, brakes, drill-harrows, etc., which we now see almost
everywhere where the old system of plain ploughing, harrowing, and
broad-cast sowing prevailed to the infinite loss of seed and growth of
weeds. Then comes the thrashing machine invented by Menzies, and
improved by Meikle from stage to stage, successively adapted to horses,
wind, water, and eventually the giant power of steam, thus giving to the
operations of the barn a rapidity equal to the skill and neatness
displayed in the field. The scientific genius of Sir Humphry Davy,
Thompson, Fourcroy, Parmentier, Kirwan, Gay Lussac, and many other
eminent chemists, have been employed to investigate more accurately the
real nature of soils and manures, and a vast increase of productive
power has been the result. Bones, a source of fertility till of late
entirely wasted, have done wonders; rape-dust, malt-dust, oil, fish,
salt, wood and peat ashes, soot, gypsum, and many other substances, have
been made the active agents of human subsistence. The best mixture of
crops has been determined by numerous experiments; and the benefits of
stall-feeding clearly demonstrated. Mangel-würzel, trifolium
incarnatum--a plant which from its rich crimson hue would be an ornament
of our fields even were it not a profitable production--and other
vegetables, have been added to that plenteous growth of clover, dills,
lucerne, rape, turnips, etc., with which modern tillage has enriched
both summer and winter stalls. The improvement of the breed of cattle
and sheep by Bakewell of Dishly, and the Culleys; the growth of finer
and better wools by the introduction and crossing with the Merino by
Lord Somerville and others, have been as remarkable as the superior
cultivation of the soil. The science of draining has found devotees
equally ardent, and has produced the most striking consequences. In many
instances the mere act of draining has quadrupled the produce of land.
In the weald of Kent, land which produced only a rental of five
shillings an acre, has been raised by this process to five-and-twenty.
And all these objects have been watched over, canvassed, and stimulated
by the establishment of agricultural societies, agricultural journals
and newspapers, and ploughing matches. Agricultural associations are now
to be found in almost every county, and in different districts of the
same county, which offer premiums on the best specimens of horses,
cattle, and sheep; the best ploughing, and the most steady and
industrious farm and household servants. It is a new feature in rural
life, to see the whole farming population of a district hastening on a
given day, gentlemen, farmers, and farm-servants all in their best
array, to some one spot where the cattle are shewn, the ploughing is
done, the prizes are awarded by umpires chosen from the most skilful,
and the different parties then going to a good dinner, and a long talk
and hearty toasting of all the interests of agriculture.
[1] This education is now likely to be extended to the great body of
farmers. In Ireland, at Templemoyle, a college is established where
the sons of farmers are instructed in every branch of science which
can enable them to pursue agriculture successfully, while they daily
work certain hours on the farm attached, thus making a familiar
practical acquaintance with all the best processes of cultivation
under the ablest professors. Similar colleges are also contemplated
for England.
It is really too, as curious to see on our scientific farms the vast
variety of implements and machines which these causes have
produced;--ploughs--about a dozen and a half swing-ploughs, and upwards
of a dozen wheel-ploughs of different constructions, and by different
patentees; harrows, drills, cultivators. Every species of soil and crop
has its peculiar apparatus; in the field and the farm-yard; for getting
seed into the ground, clearing and dressing when there, for thrashing it
out and cleaning it for market; for sowing peas, beans, turnips,
carrots, parsnips, etc., for chopping, slicing, and preparing them for
cattle; their machines for tedding hay, for stacking it with least
possible risk, for cutting and steaming it; for ploughing up weeds,
ploughing up moorlands, and even roads; for reaping by wholesale, and
raking by wholesale; for tapping deep springs, and guttering the surface
for the escape of top-water; there are their machines for paring and
levelling lumpy lands; for cross-cutting furrows to make rough mossy
land take seed better; their channels, sluices, and schemes for
irrigation. And then, who shall tell all their implements for
hay-binding, rope-twisting, furze-pounding for cattle; their novel
churns, their ratteries, their new-fangled mole-traps, their
poultry-feeders, and pheasant-feeders, by which those birds are enabled
to help themselves from tin boxes supplied with grain for them, without
feathered depredators being able to go shares with them. Truly Solomon
might say that men now-a-days have sought out many inventions!
But who shall calculate all the thoughts and the labours of such men as
Fitzherbert, Tusser, Gooch, Platt, Hartlib, Weston, Markham, Sir Walter
Raleigh, Sir John Norden, John Evelyn, Worlidge, Stillingfleet, Harte,
Arthur Young, Maxwell, Lord Kaimes, Sir John Sinclair, etc. etc.? Who
shall aggregate and estimate the numerous and valuable suggestions and
articles of anonymous writers in the journals; and the personal labours
and fostering influence of such men as the late Dukes of Buccleugh, and
of Bedford, the Duke of Portland, Earl Spencer, the late Lord
Somerville, Mr. Coke of Holkham, now the Earl of Leicester, and many
other noblemen and gentlemen who have spent their lives in the
unostentatious but most meritorious endeavour to perfect the
agricultural science of England? With the exception of naturalists,
there are no men whose pursuits seem to me to yield them so much real
happiness as intelligent agriculturists whose hearts are in the
business; and though there are men whose offices or professions place
them more in the public eye, there are none who are more truly the
benefactors of their country. Such were Lord Somerville and the Duke of
Buccleugh, as described by Sir Walter Scott; and there is a passage in
his memoir of the latter nobleman well worth the notice of those who
propagate or believe in the nonsense of the economists on the
non-influence of absenteeism. “In the year 1817, when the poor stood so
much in need of employment, a friend asked the Duke why his Grace did
not prepare to go to London in the spring? By way of answer, the Duke
shewed him a list of day-labourers then employed in improvements on his
different estates, the number of whom, exclusive of his regular
establishments, amounted to _nine hundred and forty-seven persons_. If
we allow to each labourer two persons, whose support depended on his
wages, the Duke was in a manner foregoing, during this severe year, the
privilege of his rank, in order to provide with more convenience for a
little army of nearly three thousand persons, many of whom must
otherwise have found it difficult to obtain subsistence. The result of
such conduct is twice blessed; both in the means which it employs, and
in the end which it attains in the general improvement of the country.
This anecdote forms a good answer to those theorists who pretend that
the residence of proprietors on their estates is a matter of
indifference to the inhabitants of that district. Had the Duke been
residing, and spending his revenue elsewhere, one half of these poor
people would have wanted employment and food; and would probably have
been little comforted by any metaphysical arguments upon population,
which could have been presented to their investigation.”--_Scott’s Prose
Works_, vol. 4.
Many such things may be daily heard of the present Duke of Portland, in
the neighbourhood of Welbeck Abbey, in Nottinghamshire; which convince
you that he is one of those men that contrive to pass through life
without much noise, but reaping happiness and respect in abundance, and
while gratifying the taste for rural occupation, conferring the most
lasting benefits upon the country. I shall close this section of this
chapter with the _substance_ of one such act, related to me some years
ago. In the manner of relation it may therefore differ somewhat from
that in which originally told, but in fact I believe it to be perfectly
correct. The Duke found that one of his tenants, a small farmer, was
falling, year after year, into arrears of rent. The steward wished to
know what should be done. The Duke rode to the farm; saw that it was
rapidly deteriorating, and the man, who was really an experienced and
industrious farmer, totally unable to manage it, from poverty. In fact,
all that was on the farm was not enough to pay the arrears. “John,” said
the Duke, as the farmer came to meet him as he rode up to the house, “I
want to look over the farm a little.” As they went along,--“Really,”
said he, “every thing is in very bad case. This won’t do. I see you are
quite under it. All your stock and crops won’t pay the rent in arrear. I
will tell you what I must do. I must take the farm into my own hands.
You shall look after it for me, and I will pay you your wages.” Of
course there was no saying nay,--the poor man bowed assent. Presently
there came a reinforcement of stock, then loads of manure,--at the
proper time, seed, and wood from the plantations for repairing gates and
buildings. The Duke rode over frequently. The man exerted himself, and
seemed really quite relieved from a load of care by the change. Things
speedily assumed a new aspect. The crops and stock flourished; fences
and outbuildings were put into good order. In two or three rent days,
it was seen by the steward’s books that the farm was paying its way. The
Duke on his next visit, said, “Well, John, I think the farm does very
well now. We will change again. You shall be tenant again; and as you
now have your head fairly above water, I hope you will be able to keep
it there.” The Duke rode off at his usual rapid rate. The man stood in
astonishment; but a happy fellow he was, when on applying to the steward
he found that he was actually re-entered as tenant to the farm just as
it stood in its restored condition;--I will venture to say, however,
that the Duke himself was the happier man of the two.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI.
PLANTING.
“Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a
tree; it will be growing, Jock, when _ye’re sleeping_.”--_Heart of
Mid-Lothian._
What we have just said of the pleasures and benefit of scientific
farming, may be said also of planting; it is but another interesting
mode of employing time by landed proprietors, at once for recreation and
the improvement of their estates. What, indeed, can be more delightful
than planning future woods, where, perhaps, now sterile heather, or
naked declivities present themselves; clothing, warming, diversifying in
imagination your vicinity; then turning your visions into realities, and
watching the growth of your forests? Since John Evelyn wrote his
eloquent Sylva, and displayed the deplorable condition of our woodlands,
and since Dr. Johnson penned his sarcastic Tour to the Hebrides, both
England and Scotland have done much to repair the ravages made in the
course of ages in our woods. A strong spirit on the subject has grown up
in the minds of our landed gentry, and vast numbers of trees of all
kinds suitable to our climate have been planted in different parts of
the island. The Commissioners of Woods and Forests have made extensive
plantations of oak in the New Forest, and other places. In the
neighbourhood of all gentlemen’s houses we see evidences of liberal
planting: and the rich effect of these young woods is well calculated to
strengthen the love of planting. In this part of Surrey, wood, indeed,
seems the great growth of the country. Look over the landscape from
Richmond Hill, from Claremont, from St. George’s or St. Anne’s Hill, and
it is one wide sea of wood. The same is the case in the bordering
regions of Buckingham and Berk shires. Richmond Park, Hampton-Court
Park, Bushy Park, Claremont and Esher Parks, Oatlands, Painshill,
Windsor, Ockham, Bookham--the whole wide country is covered with parks,
woods, and fields, the very hedge-rows of which are dense, continuous
lines of trees. Look into the part of Kent approaching the metropolis
from the heights of Norwood, and the prospect is the same. Many of the
extensive commons hereabout, as Bookham and Streatham commons, are
scattered with fine oaks, some of them very ancient, and diversified
with thickets and green glades, and rather resemble old forests and
parks, than commons as seen elsewhere. Then again, the sandy heaths of
Surrey are covered in many places with miles of Scotch firs. There
certainly is no want of wood in these parts. In the sandy wastes of Old
Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, many thousand acres, principally of
larch, have been planted on the estates of the Dukes of Portland and
Newcastle, Lord Scarborough, Earl Manvers, Colonels Need, Wildman, and
other proprietors. Even the cold hills of the Peak of Derbyshire have
been planted in some parts extensively; and lands in those districts
which were literally unproductive, are now a source of considerable
income from the thinning of the woods. In Scotland the same change is
very visible. All along the borders the good lands are beautifully
cultivated, the bad extensively planted. From the dreary flats about
Gretna Green to the borders of Northumberland and Berwickshire, this is
the case. Passing into Scotland by the Cheviots, we saw extensive woods
on the border lands of the Duke of Northumberland, Earl Tankerville, Mr.
Collingwood, Mr. St. Paul, etc. The cold and wild tract between Kelso
and Edinburgh presents cheering appearances of the extension of the
planting spirit. In the counties of Argyle, Ross, and Inverness, which
Monteith of Stirling, in his Forester’s Guide, particularly points out
as wanting wood, we were struck with the great extent of planting
already done. Every summer tourist up the Clyde sees how much the woods
round Roseneath have sheltered and beautified it--and the woods around
Inverary Castle are, to a great extent, very splendid--while all the
way thence to Oban you pass through mountain glens and over moorlands
enriched with woods. The Duke of Athol, about Athol and Dunkeld, has
planted upwards of 15,000 acres. The Duke of Montrose has been a great
planter. Sir Walter Scott was a diligent planter, as the young woods
round Abbotsford testify; and there are no moments of his life in which
we can imagine him happier than when mounted on his pony he progressed
through his plantations at his leisure, with his pruning-knife in his
hand. But what he did on his own estate is trivial to what he did by his
writings. He may be said to have planted more trees by his pen than any
man alive has with his spade. He himself tells us that the simple words
put into the mouth of the Laird of Dumbiedikes, and placed as a motto at
the head of this chapter, induced a certain Earl to plant a large tract
of country.
In the neighbourhood of Dingwall, Beuley, Beaufort,--from Inverness to
Culloden,--in short, in almost every part of the Highlands,--you find
extensive young woods of larch and pine. Many of these, it must be
confessed, have apparently been made with more regard to profit than
beauty. In many of the sweet straths, and along the feet of the
mountains, the long monotonous reaches of larch--an unbroken, unvaried
succession of pointed pyramids--present but an indifferent contrast to
the free slopes of beauty which the native growth of the birches
exhibits; dotting glens and embosoming lochs with a fairyland
loveliness. As they become large, and are thinned properly, or rather,
where they are planted thinly, on the plan of the Duke of Athol, this
defect may be remedied. Scotch firs, when large, assume a wild forest
majesty; and larches in mountainous situations, of an ancient growth,
have an Alpine sweep of boughs that is extremely picturesque and
graceful; but young crowded firs of any kind are too formal for beauty.
Mr. Wordsworth, in his Guide to the Lakes of Westmoreland and
Cumberland, complains grievously of the injury done to the scenery
there, by the injudicious planting of larch. “Larch and fir plantations
have been spread, not merely with a view to profit, but in many
instances for the sake of ornament. To those who plant for profit, and
are thrusting every other tree out of the way, to make room for their
favourite, the larch, I would utter first a regret, that they should
have selected these lovely vales for their vegetable manufactory, when
there is so much barren and irreclaimable land in the neighbouring
moors, and in other parts of the island, which might have been had for
this purpose at a far cheaper rate.--It must be acknowledged that the
larch, till it has outgrown the size of a shrub, shews, when looked at
singly, some elegance of form and appearance, especially in spring,
decorated, as it then is, by the pink tassels of its blossoms; but, as a
tree, it is less than any other pleasing. Its branches--for boughs it
has none--have no variety in the youth of the tree, and little dignity
even when it attains its full growth; _leaves_ it cannot be said to
have, consequently affords neither shade nor shelter. In spring, the
larch becomes green long before the native trees, and its green is so
peculiar and vivid, that, finding nothing to harmonize with it, wherever
it comes forth a disagreeable speck is produced. In summer, when all
other trees are in their pride, it is of a dingy, lifeless hue; in
autumn, of a spiritless unvaried yellow; and in winter, it is still more
lamentably distinguished from any other deciduous tree of the forest,
for they seem only to sleep, but the larch seems absolutely dead. If an
attempt be made to mingle thickets, or a certain proportion of other
forest trees, with the larch, its horizontal branches intolerantly cut
them down, as with a scythe, or force them to spindle up to keep pace
with it. The terminating spike renders it impossible that the several
trees, where planted in numbers, should ever blend together so as to
form a mass, or masses of wood. Add thousands to tens of thousands, and
the appearance is still the same--a collection of separate individual
trees, obstinately presenting themselves as such; and which, from
whatever point they are looked at, if but seen, may be counted upon the
fingers. Sunshine, or shadow, has little power to adorn the surface of
such a wood; and the trees not carrying up their heads, the wind raises
amongst them no majestic undulations.”
There is much truth in these remarks, and they cannot be too much borne
in mind by all planters where picturesque beauty is an object. On dreary
moors, where the larch is planted merely for profit, and where the
_tout-ensemble_ cannot readily be attained, woods of it often present a
great degree of pleasantness by contrast. They give you green glades
and narrow footpaths, between heath and fern, their slender boughs
hanging above you, especially in the freshness of their foliage, very
agreeably. As a matter of profit, and for the value of its timber, few
species of wood can compete with it. The following extract from the
Transactions of the Highland Society, gives a very striking view of its
importance. “Larch will supply ship-timber at a great height above the
region of the oak; and while a seventy-four gun ship will require the
oak timber of seventy-five acres, it will not require more than the
timber of ten acres of larch; the trees, in both cases being sixty-eight
years old. The larch, at Dunkeld, grows at the height of 1300 feet above
the level of the sea; the spruce at 1200; the Scotch pine at 700; and
deciduous trees at not higher than 500. The larch, in comparison with
the Scotch pine, is found to produce three and three-quarter times more
timber, and that timber of seven times more value. The larch also, being
a deciduous tree, instead of injuring the pasture under it, improves it.
The late Duke of Athol, John the Second, planted in the last year of his
life, 6500 Scotch acres of mountain ground solely with the larch, which
in the course of seventy-two years from the time of planting will be a
forest of timber fit for the building of the largest class of ships in
her majesty’s navy. It will have been thinned out to about 400 trees per
acre. Each tree will contain at the least fifty cubic feet, or one load
of timber, which, at the low price of one shilling the cubic foot, only
one half of its present value, will give 1000_l._ per acre, or in all, a
sum of 6,500,000_l._ sterling. Besides this there will have been a
return of 7_l._ per acre from the thinnings, after deducting all expense
of thinning, and the original outlay of planting. Further still, the
land on which the larch is planted, is not worth above ninepence or one
shilling per acre. After the thinnings of the last thirty years, the
larch will make it worth at least ten shillings per acre by the
improvement of the pasturage, on which cattle can be kept summer and
winter.”
That is pretty well. This calculation is made upon land stated at 1_s._
per acre, planted with larch; but Monteith, an experienced timber
planter and valuer, gives us for oak planted on land of 1_l._ per acre
yearly rent, the following statement.
“If the proprietor, for instance, plants 100 acres of ground, the trees
being placed four feet distant from each other, each acre will contain
3422 plants. If it be planted with hard woods, chiefly oaks, and a few
firs to nurse them up, supposing it is a plantation purely for profit,
the expense of plants and planting,
per acre, will be 6_l._ £ 600 0 0
Rent of land for ten years, at 1_l._ per acre,
per annum 1000 0 0
Interest on rent 225 0 0
Expenses of thinning, pruning, and training up
for 10 years, at 1_l._ per acre per annum 1000 0 0
----------
Total expenditure £ 2825 0 0
Deduct produce of 1000 trees thinned from each
acre, during the first 10 years, at 2_l._ per
acre £ 200 0 0
Deduct value of 2422 trees left on the ground
after the first 10 years, at 7_l._ 10_s._ per
acre 750 0 0 950 0 0
----------
Total outlay at the end of 10 years £ 1875 0 0
To which add expense of thinning and pruning for
the next 10 years, at 2_l._ per acre £ 200 0 0
Rent of the land for the same period at 1_l._
per acre per annum 1000 0 0
Interest on the rent for the same period 275 0 0
Interest on 1875_l._ for 10 years 937 0 0 2412 0 0
----------
Total outlay for 20 years £ 4287 0 0
Deduct produce of 1000 trees thinned out during
the last 10 years, from each acre, at 6_d._ each,
or 25_l._ per acre £ 2500 0 0
Deduct for 1422 trees which fall to be enhanced in
value during the last 10 years, and will come to
at least 35_l._ 11_s._ per acre 3555 0 0 6055 0 0
----------
£ 1768 0 0
Deduct from this the value of these 1000 trees
as they were first estimated at the end of the
first 10 years, at 3_l._ 2_s._ per acre 310 0 0
----------
Thus leaving a balance in favour, of £ 1458 0 0”
Hitherto the amount of gain is comparatively small, but this calculation
continued according to the growth of the trees for ten years more, will
leave the balance no less than 23,667_l._ And to the end of forty years
from first planting, the round sum of 41,000_l._ “These calculations,”
says Monteith, “may, to those who have paid no attention to the subject,
excite wonder if not doubt, but in making them the author has been
careful to lessen rather than exaggerate the profits: and if the
plantation shall have been carried to the age of sixty or seventy years,
and properly thinned, etc., the value will be double what it was at
forty years.” Thus, if 100 acres in seventy years will yield 80,000_l._
planted with oak, 6000 acres will yield about 5,000,000_l._; while 6000
acres of the larch plantations of Athol in the same period are
calculated to yield about 6,000,000_l._ There is sufficient agreement to
lead us to suppose the calculations probably accurate, and what a
splendid inducement to judicious planting do these calculations present!
The following facts, given in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” (vol. i.,
art. Agriculture), are also particularly interesting to the planter. Mr.
Pavier, in the fourth volume of the Bath Papers, computes the value of
fifty acres of oak timber in 100 years to be 12,100_l._, which is nearly
2_l._ 10_s._ annually per acre; and if we consider that this is
continually accumulating, without any of that expense or risk to which
annual crops are subject, it is probable that timber-planting may be
accounted one of the most profitable departments of husbandry. Evelyn
calculates the profit of 1000 acres of oak land in 150 years at no less
than 670,000_l._
The following table shews the increase of trees from their first
planting. It was taken from the Marquis of Lansdowne’s plantation, begun
in the year 1765, and the calculation made in 1786. It is about six
acres in extent, the soil partly a swampy meadow upon a gravelly bottom.
The measures were taken at five feet above the surface of the ground;
the small trees having been occasionally drawn for posts and rails, as
well as rafters for cottages, and when peeled of the bark will stand
well for seven years.
Circumference in
Feet in height. Feet. Inches.
Lombardy Poplar 60 to 80 4 8
Abeel 50-70 4 6
Plane 50-60 3 6
Acacia 50-60 2 4
Elm 40-60 3 6
Chestnut 30-50 2 9
Weymouth Pine 30-50 2 5
Chester ditto 30-50 2 5
Scotch Fir 30-50 2 10
Spruce 30-50 2 2
Larch 50-60 3 10
From this table it appears that the planting of timber trees, when the
return can be waited for twenty years, will undoubtedly repay the
original cost of planting as well as the interest of the money laid out,
which is better worth the attention of the proprietor of land, as the
ground on which they grow may be supposed good for cattle also.
In Argyleshire, there are probably 40,000 acres of natural coppice wood
which are cut periodically; commonly every nineteen or twenty years, and
are understood to return about 1_l._ an acre annually. Very extensive
plantations have been formed by the Duke of Argyle, and other
proprietors. About thirty years ago those of his Grace were reckoned to
contain 2,000,000 trees, worth then 4_s._ each amounting to the enormous
sum of 400,000_l._
I knew a certain old military officer who during his early years was a
captain in a militia regiment. His brother officers were a gay set of
fellows, and were continually drawing on their private incomes, and
often coming to him to borrow money; but he made it a rule never to
spend more than his own pay, and as to money, he never had any to lend.
He went down to his estate every spring and autumn, and planted as many
acres of trees as his rental would allow him. His planting gave him a
perpetual plea of poverty. At a certain age he retired on his half-pay.
A large family was growing around him, but his woods were growing too.
Many a time have I seen him, mounted on an old brood mare, with a sort
of capacious game-bag across her loins, with his gun slung at his
shoulder, his saws and pruning-knives strapped behind his saddle, going
away into his woods: and keeping the calculations of Monteith, and of
the larch plantations of Athol, in mind, I can now imagine the profound
satisfaction which the old gentleman, through a long course of years,
must have felt in the depths of his forest solitudes. He is still
living, at an advanced age. His family is large, and has been expensive;
but his woods were large too, and no doubt their _thinnings_ have proved
very grateful _thinnings_ of his family charges.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VII.
GARDENS.
We must now wind up, in a few words, what we have to say of the country
life of the gentry, and these words must be on their gardens. In these,
as in all those other sources of enjoyment that surround them,
perfection seems to be reached. They live in the midst of scenes which,
while they appear nature itself, are the result of art consummated only
by ages of labour, research, science, travel, and the most remarkable
discoveries. Nothing can be more delicious than the rural paradises
which now surround our country houses. Walks, waters, lawns of velvet
softness, trees casting broad shadows, or whispering in the stirrings of
the breeze; seclusion and yet airiness; flowers from all regions,
besides all the luxuries which the kitchen-garden, the orchard,
conservatories, hothouses, and sunny walls pour upon our tables, are so
blended and diffused around our dwellings, that nothing on earth can be
more delectable. It is impossible, without looking back through many
ages of English life, to form any idea of the real advantages which we
enjoy of this kind,--of the immense stride we have made from the bare
and rigid life of our ancestors. How many of the fruits or flowers, or
culinary vegetables, which we possess in such excellence and perfection,
did this country originally produce? Few, indeed, of our indigenous
flowers are retained in our gardens, few of our vegetables besides the
cabbage and the carrot; and what were the ancient British fruits besides
the crab and the bullace? But we have only to look back to the feudal
times to see the wide difference between our gardens and those then
existing; for all that could be enjoyed of a garden must be compressed
within the narrow boundary of the castle moat. Every thing without was
subject to continual ravage and destruction; and though orchards were
planted without, and suffered to take their chance, the ladies’ little
parterre occupied some sheltered nook of the court, or space between
grim towers:
Now was there maide fast by the touris wall,
A garden faire, and in the corneris set
An herbere grew; with wandis long and small,
Railit about, and so with treeis set
Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,
That lyfe was now, walkyng there for bye,
That myght within scarce any wight espye.
_The Quair, by James I. of Scotland._
And the plot of culinary herbs occupied some sheltered spot within the
moat; which when it is recollected how many other requisites of
existence and defence were also compressed into the same
space--soldiers, arms, and machines of war; sleeping and eating rooms;
room for the stabling and fodder of horses, and often of cattle; space
for daily exercise, martial or recreative; bowls, tilting or
tennis,--when cooped up by their enemies, or made cautious by critical
times, small indeed must have been the space or the leisure for gardens.
Even in 1540, Leland in his Itinerary, tells us that our nobility still
dwelt in castles, and there retained the usual defences of moats, and
drawbridges. This was especially the case, the nearer they approached to
the Scotch or Welsh borders; though in the vicinity of London villas and
palaces had long sprung up. At Wressel Castle, near Howden, in
Yorkshire, he says, “The gardens within the mote, and the orchardes
without, were exceeding fair. And yn the orchardes were mounts, _opere
topiario_, writhen about with degrees like the turnings in cokil
shelles, to come to the top without payn.” The career, indeed, by which
our gardens have reached their present condition, has been, as I have
said, the career of many ages, revolutions, and stupendous events. It is
not only curious, but most interesting to trace all those circumstances
which have contributed to raise horticulture to its present
eminence,--the great national events, the extension of discovery, of the
arts, of general knowledge; the deep ponderings in cells and fields; the
achievements of genius, of enterprise; the combinations of science, and
the variations of taste which have brought it to what it is. The history
of our gardening is, in fact, the history of Europe. The monks, whose
religious character gave them an extraordinary security, as they were
the first restorers of agriculture, so they were the first extenders and
improvers of our gardens. Their long pilgrimages from one holy shrine to
another, through France, Germany, and Italy, made them early acquainted
with a variety of culinary and medicinal herbs, and with various fruits;
and amongst the ruins of abbeys we still find a tribe of plants that
they thus naturalized. The crusades gave the next extension to
horticultural knowledge; the growing commerce and wealth of Europe
fostered it still farther; and the successive magnificent discoveries of
the Indies, America, the isles of the Pacific and Australia, with all
their new and splendid and invaluable productions, raised the desire for
such things to the highest pitch; and made our gardens and greenhouses
affluent beyond all imagination. What hosts of new and curious plants do
they still send us every season! From every corner of the earth are they
daily reaching us: the average value of the plants in Loddige’s gardens
is calculated at 200,000_l._ But what a blank would they now be but for
the mighty spirit of commerce, the thirst of discovery, and of
traversing distant regions, which animate such numbers of our
countrymen, and send them out to extend our geography, geology, and
natural history, or to prosecute astronomical and philosophical science
under every portion of the heavens? And besides these causes, how much
is yet to be accounted for by the tastes of peculiar ages--out of the
peculiar studies of the times, and the singular genius of particular men
thence arising. The influence of poets and imaginative writers upon the
character of our gardens has been extreme. Whether an age were poetical
or mathematical, made a mighty difference in the garden-style of the
time. C. Matius, the favourite of Augustus Cæsar, introduced the fashion
at Rome of clipping trees into shapes of animals and other grotesque
forms; Pliny admired the invention, and celebrated it under the name of
topiary-work; and so strongly did it take hold on the spirits of men,
that it descended to all the nations of Europe, and was not exploded by
us till the last century. Sir Henry Wotton, the tasteful and poetical
courtier of Queen Elizabeth, and ambassador of James to Venice, with
notions of the fitness of a garden far beyond his age, yet thought it
“_a graceful and natural conceit_” in Michael Angelo to make a
fountain-figure in the shape of “a sturdy washerwoman, washing and
winding of linen clothes, in which act she wrings out the water which
made the fountain.” And again Addison, followed by Pope and Walpole,
overturned this ancient fondness for pleached walks, and tonsured trees,
and quaint fountain-figures, whether of Neptunes, Niles, or washerwomen.
Then the great change of the social system, from the feudal and military
to civil and domestic, produced a correspondent change in the culture of
gardens. While the country was rent to pieces by contentions for the
crown, there could be little leisure or taste for gardens; but when men
became peaceful, and collected their habitations into clusters, they
naturally began to embellish both them and their environs.
From the reign of Edward III. to that of Henry VIII. we look over a
large space, and find but slight improvement in horticulture, and scanty
traces of its literature. A bushel of onions in Richard II.’s reign cost
twelve shillings of our present money: Henry VII. records himself, in a
MS. preserved in the Remembrance Office, that apples were in his day one
and two shillings each, a red one fetching the highest price; and Henry
VIII.’s queen, Catherine, when she wanted a salad, sent to Flanders for
it. The very first book which was written on the culture of the soil in
this country, appears to be Walter de Henly’s--“De Yconomia sive
Housbandria,” Then came Nicholas Bollar’s books, “De Arborum
Plantatione,” and “De Generatione Arborum et Modo Generandi et
Plantandi,” and some other MS. writings. Richard II. rewarded botanical
skill in the person of John Bray with a pension. Henry Calcoensis in the
fifteenth century composed a Synopsis Herbaria, and translated Palladius
de Re Rustica into Gaelic. In the sixteenth century William Horman,
Vice-Provost of Eton, wrote Herbarum Synonyma and Indexes to Cato,
Varro, Columella, and Palladius; and in the same century Wynkin de Worde
printed “Mayster Groshede’s Boke of Husbandry,” which contained
instructions for planting and grafting of trees and vines. Arnold’s
Chronicle in 1521, had a chapter on the same subject, and how to raise a
salad in an hour; and Pynson published the “Boke of Surveying and
Improvements.” Then came Dr. Bulleyn, Dodoneus, Sir Anthony Fitzherbert,
and Tusser; and that is the history of gardens and their literature till
the time of Henry VIII.; but thence to the eighteenth century,--to the
days of Bridgman and Kent, what multitudes of grand, quaint, and
artificial gardens were spread over the country. Nonsuch, Theobalds,
Greenwich, Hampton-Court, Hatfield, Moor-Park, Chatsworth, Beaconsfield,
Cashiobury, Ham, and many another, stood in all that stately formality
which Henry and Elizabeth admired, and in which our Surreys, Leicesters,
Essexes; the splendid nobles of the Tudor dynasty, the gay ladies and
gallants of Charles II.’s court, had walked and talked, fluttered in
glittering processions, or flirted in green alleys and bowers of
topiary-work; and amid figures, in lead or stone, fountains, cascades,
copper trees dropping sudden showers on the astonished passers under,
stately terraces with gilded balustrades, and curious quincunx,
obelisks, and pyramids--fitting objects of the admiration of those who
walked in high-heeled shoes, ruffs and fardingales, with fan in hand, or
in trunk-hose and laced doublets.
“The palace of Nonsuch,” said Hentzner in 1598, “is encompassed with
parks full of deer, delicious gardens, groves ornamented with
trellis-work, cabinets of verdure (summer-houses, or seats cut in yew),
and walls so embowered with trees, that it seems to be a place pitched
upon by pleasure herself to dwell in along with health. In the pleasure
and artificial gardens are many columns and pyramids of marble; two
fountains that spout water, one round, the other like a pyramid, upon
which are perched small birds that stream water out of their bills. In
the grove of Diana is a very agreeable fountain, with Actæon turned into
a stag, as he was sprinkled by the goddess and the nymphs, with
inscriptions. Here is, besides, another pyramid of marble full of
concealed pipes, which spurt upon all who come within their reach.” In
the gardens of Lord Burleigh, at Theobalds, he tells us are nine knots,
artificially and _exquisitely_ made, one of which was set for the
likeness of the king’s arms. One might walk two miles in the walks
before he came to the end.
In Hampton-Court, was a fountain with syrens and other statues by
Fanelli. At Kensington were bastions and counterscarps of clipped yew
and variegated holly, being the objects of wonder and admiration under
the name of the siege of Troy. At Chatsworth the temporary cascade, the
water-god, the copper-tree, and the jets-d’eau, still remain in all
their glory.
The hands of Bridgman, Kent and Brown, and the pens of Addison, Pope,
and Walpole, have put all this ancient glory of Roman style to the
flight; and driven us, perhaps, into danger of going too far after
nature. The winding walks, the turfy lawns, the bowery shrubberies, the
green slopes to the margin of waters, the retention of rocks and
thickets where they naturally stood,--all this is very beautiful, and
many a sweet elysian scene do they spread around our English houses. But
in imitating nature we are apt to imitate her as she appears in her
rudest places, and not as she would modify herself in the vicinity of
human habitations. We are apt to make too little difference between the
garden and the field; between the shrubbery and the wood. We are come to
think that all which differs from wild nature is artificial, and
therefore absurd. Something too much of this, I think, we are beginning
to feel we have had amongst us. It has been the fashion to cry down all
gardens as ugly and tasteless, which are not shaped by our modern
notions. The formalities of the French and Dutch have been sufficiently
condemned. For my part, I like even them in their place. One would no
more think of laying out grounds now in this manner, than of wearing
Elizabethan ruffs, or bag-wigs and basket-hilted swords; yet the old
French and Dutch gardens, as the appendages of a quaint old house, are
in my opinion, beautiful. They are like many other things--not so much
beautiful in themselves, as beautiful by association--as memorials of
certain characters and ages. A garden, after all, is an artificial
thing; and though formed from the materials of nature, may be allowed to
mould them into something very different from nature. There is a wild
beauty of nature, and there is a beauty in nature linked to art: one
looks for a very different kind of beauty in fields and mountains, to
what one does in a garden. The one delights you by a certain rude
freedom and untamed magnificence; the other, by smoothness and
elegance--by velvet lawns, bowery arbours, winding paths, fair branching
shrubs, fountains, and juxta-position of many rare flowers.
It appears to me that it is an inestimable advantage as it regards our
gardens, that the former taste of the nation has differed so much from
its present one. Without this, what a loss of variety we should have
suffered! If the taste of the present generation had been that of all
past ages, what could there have been in the gardens of our past kings,
nobles, and historical characters to mark them as strongly and
emphatically as they are now marked? They now, indeed, seem to belong to
men and things gone by; and I would as soon almost see one of our
venerable cathedrals rased with the ground, as one of those old gardens
rooted up. There is something in them of a sombre and becoming
melancholy. They are in keeping with the houses they surround, and the
portraits in the galleries of those houses. When we wander through the
pleached alleys, and by the time-stained fountains of these old gardens,
perished years indeed seem to come back again to us. In the centre of
some vast avenue of majestic elms or limes, sweeping their boughs to the
ground, “the dial-stone aged and green” arrests our attention, and
points not to the present hour, but to the past. Our historic memories
are intimately connected with such places. Our Howards, Essexes,
Surreys, and Wolseys, were the magnificent founders and creators of such
places; and in such, Shakspeare and Spenser, Milton and Bacon, and
Sidney mused. It is astonishing what numbers of our poets, philosophers,
and literati, are connected with the history of our gardens by their
writings, or love of them. Sir Henry Wotton, Parkinson, Ray, John
Evelyn, Sir Walter Raleigh, Bacon, Addison, Pope, Sir William Temple,
who not only wrote “the Garden of Epicurus,” but so delighted in
gardening that he directed in his will that his heart should be buried
beneath the sun-dial in his garden at Moor-Park in Surrey, where it
accordingly was deposited in a silver box: Horace Walpole, Locke,
Cowley, Shenstone, Charles Cotton, Waller, Bishop Fleetwood, Spence, the
author of Polymetis, Gilpin of the Forest Scenery, Mason, Dr. Darwin,
Cowper, and many others, have their fame linked to the history or the
love of gardens.
There is something very interesting too, in the biography of our old
patriarchs of English gardening. There is scarcely one of those large
nurseries and gardens round London but is connected with them, as their
founders, or improvers--as the Tradescants of Lambeth,--London and Wise
of Brompton,--Philip Miller of Chelsea,--Gray of Fulham,--Furber of
Kensington,--Lee of Hammersmith. It is cheering to observe how much our
monarchs, from Henry VIII. to George III. were, with their principal
nobility, almost to a man, whatever was their character in other
respects, not even excepting the dissipated Charles II., munificent
patrons of gardening, and founders of grand gardens. It is interesting
to read of the giant labours, and now apparently curious locations of
our early gardeners and herbalists. How Dr. Turner imbibed botanical
knowledge from Lucas Ghinus at Bologna, and came and established a
“garden of rare plants” at Kew; while Mrs. Gape had another at
Westminster, which furnished the first specimens for Chelsea garden. How
Ray, and Lobel, and Penny, roamed everywhere in search of new plants.
How Didymus Mountain published his “Gardener’s Labyrinth:” how Sir Hugh
Platt, of Lincoln’s-Inn, gentleman, wrote the Jewel House of Art and
Nature, the Paradise of Kew, and the Garden of Eden, and had, moreover,
a garden in St. Martin’s Lane. How the “Rei Rusticæ” of Conrad
Heresbach, counsellor to the Duke of Cleve, was translated by Barnaby
Googe, and reprinted by Gervase Markham, gentleman, of Gotham in
Nottinghamshire. How old John Gerarde travelled, when young, up the
Baltic, and had his “Physick Garden” in Holborn. How John Parkinson
travelled forty years before he wrote his “Paradisus,” and was appointed
by Charles I. for his Theatre of Plants, Botanicus Regius Primarius. How
Gabriel Plattes, though styled by his cotemporaries, “an excellent
genius,” and “of an adventurous caste of mind,” died miserably in the
streets. How Walter Blythe of Oliver Cromwell’s army wrote the “Survey
of Husbandry,” which Professor Martyn pronounces “an incomparable work.”
How Samuel Hartlib, the son of a Polish merchant, the friend of Milton,
of Archbishop Usher and Joseph Meade, wrote his “Legacy,” and assisted
in establishing the embryo Royal Society; how John Tradescant was in
Russia, and accompanied the fleet sent against the Algerines in 1620,
and collected on that occasion plants in Barbary, and in the isles of
the Mediterranean; and how his son John, afterwards made a voyage in
pursuit of plants to Virginia, “and brought many new ones back with
him.” How their Museum, established in South Lambeth, and called
“Tradescant’s Ark,” was the constant resort of the great and learned;
how it fell into the hands of Elias Ashmole, and became the _Ashmolean_
Museum.
These, and such facts, shew us by what labours and steps our present
garden-wealth has been raised; and diffuse an interest over a number of
places familiar to us. Go, indeed, into what part of the island we will,
we find some object of attraction and curiosity in the gardens attached
to our old houses. As the coach passes the residence of Colonel Howard,
at Leven’s Bridge in Westmoreland, it stops, the passengers get out, and
mount upon its top, and there behold a fine old Elizabethan house,
standing in the midst of a garden of that age, with all its
topiary-work, its fountains, statues, and lawns. At Stonyhurst in
Lancashire, now a Jesuit’s College, I was delighted to find a beautiful
old garden of this description, which I have elsewhere described; and at
Margam Abbey in South Wales, I found a fine assemblage of orange trees,
the very trees which Sir Henry Wotton sent from Italy as a present to
James I. These trees had been thrown ashore here by the wreck of the
vessel, and the owner of the place, by the king’s permission, built a
splendid orangery to receive them, which stood in the centre of a garden
surrounded on three sides by woody hills; and in which fuchsias, at
least ten feet high, with stems thick as a man’s arm, were growing in
the open air, and tulip-trees large as the forest trees around. But what
gave a still greater charm to this garden was, that the ruins of a fine
old abbey stood here and there on its lawn; arches, overgrown with
bushes, and the graceful pillars of a noble chapter-house, around whose
feet lay stones of ancient tombs and curious sculpture. These are the
things which give so delicious a variety to our English gardens: and
when we bear in mind that many of those artifices and figures which we
have been accustomed to treat with contempt as _Dutch_, are in reality
_Roman_; that such things once stood in the magnificent gardens of
Lucullus and Sallust; that the Romans gathered them again from the
Eastern nations; that they are not only classical, but that, like many
of the rites of our church and religious festivals, they are the
reliques of the most ancient times, I think we shall be inclined to
regard them with a greater degree of interest--not as objects to imitate
or to place in any competition with our own more natural style, but as
things which are of the most remote antiquity, and give a curious
diversity to our country abodes. For my part, when I see even a
fantastic peacock spreading its tail in yew in some old cottage or
farm-house garden I think of Pliny and his admiration of such
topiary-work, and would not have it cut down for the world. Even those
summer-houses built in trees, such as that built by the King of Belgium,
in Winter-Down wood, near Claremont; a sketch of which is presented in
the title-page--were Roman fancies; were formed, Pliny tells us, amid
the branches of any monarch trees that grew within their grounds, and
that even Caligula had one in a plane-tree, near his villa at Velitræ,
which he called his Nest.
Here then to all the sweet nests of English gardens, new or old, we bid
adieu, with blessings on their pleasantness.
CHAPTER VIII.
COUNTRY EXCITEMENTS.
Before closing this department of my work, I must just glance at a few
occurrences which serve to give an occasional variety to rural life, and
may be classed under the head of Country Excitements. These are races,
race-balls, county-balls, concerts, musical festivals, elections,
assizes, and confirmations. It will not be requisite to do more than
merely mention the greater part of these, for, to describe at length the
race-ball and county-balls, the winter concerts of the county town and
the musical festivals, would require a separate volume, and they indeed,
after all, belong more to the town than to the country. Having,
therefore, simply pointed them out as sources of occasional variety to
wealthy families during their stay in the country, I shall confine
myself in these concluding remarks, to those few particulars which
belong more entirely to my subject. Balls and musical exhibitions are
sufficiently alike everywhere, to need no distinct details here. It is
enough that they serve to break the rural torpor of those who regard
existence as only genuine during the London season. The application of
the profits both of these balls, and of the musical festivals that have
of late years been held in different places, to the support of
infirmaries, and to other public objects of benevolence, deserves the
highest commendation. Thus dismissing these amusements, neither I nor my
readers, I am sure, would wish to have the uproar and exasperation of
the county election introduced into this peaceful volume; enough that
when it does come to the country Hall, it comes, often as a hurricane,
and frequently shakes it to the foundation, leaving in its track debts
and mortgages, shyness between neighbours, and rancour amongst old
friends.
It would not be giving a faithful view of country life, however, were we
to keep out of sight all agitating causes, and all existing drawbacks to
the felicity for which such ample materials exist in it. Surveying those
splendid materials, as displayed in the preceding chapters,--those
abundant means and opportunities, which the wealthy possess for enjoying
their lives in the country;--it would be giving a most one-sided view of
the rural life of the rich, if we left it to be inferred that “the trail
of the serpent” was not to be perceived at times on the fair lawns, and
up the marble steps of rural palaces; that the great “Bubbly-Jock,”
(Turkey-Cock) which Scott contended that every man found in his path did
not shew himself there. The Serpent and the Bubbly-Jock which disturb
and poison the rural life of the educated classes in England, are the
very same which dash with bitter all English society in the same
classes. They are the pride of life, and the pride of the eye. They are
that continual struggle for precedence, and those jealousies which are
generated by a false social system. Every man lives now-a-day for public
observation. He builds his house, and organizes his establishment, so as
to strike public opinion as much as possible. Every man is at strife
with his neighbour in the matter of worldly greatness. The consequence
is, that a false standard of estimation, both of men and things, is
established--shew is substituted for real happiness; and no man is
valued for his moral or intellectual qualities, so much as for the
grandeur of his house, the style of his equipage, the richness of his
dinner service, and the heavy extravagance of his dinners. The result of
this is, that most are living to the full extent of their means, many
beyond it, and few are finding, in the whole round of their life, that
alone, which better and higher natures seek--the interchange of heart
and mind, which yields present delight, creates permanent attachments,
and fills the memory with enduring satisfaction.
This, it must be confessed, is a wretched state of things; but it is one
which every person conversant with society knows to exist, and which
intelligent foreigners witness with unfeigned surprise. The worst of it
is that this unnatural system of life becomes the most sensibly felt in
the country. In large towns every man finds a sufficient circle after
his own taste: there the petty influences of locality are broken up by
the multitude of objects, and the ample choice in association. But in
small towns, and country neighbourhoods, where wealthy or educated
families are thinly scattered, nothing can be more lamentable, and, were
it not lamentable, nothing could be more ludicrous, than the state of
rivalry, heart-burning, jealousy, personal mortification, or personal
pride, from mere accidents of condition or favour. The titled have a
fixed rank, and are comparatively at their ease, but in the great mass
of those who have wealth, more or less, without title, what a mighty and
eating sore is the struggle for distinction. In the little town, or
thinly-scattered neighbourhood, every one is measuring out his imaginary
dignity to see if it does not exceed, at least by some inches, that of
one or other of his neighbours. The lower you descend in the scale, the
more exacting becomes the spirit of exclusiveness. The professions look
down upon the trades; the trades on one another. Everywhere the same
uneasy spirit shews itself. Nothing can be more ludicrous, or amusing to
the philosophic spectator, than to observe how leadership is assumed in
every country neighbourhood by certain wealthy families; how carefully
that leadership is avoided and opposed by other families. How the
majority of families aspire to move in one or the other circle; what
wretched and anomalous animals those feel themselves that are not
recognised by either. How the man who drives his close carriage looks
down upon him who only drives his barouche or phaeton; how both contemn
the poor occupier of a gig. I have heard of a gentleman of large fortune
who, for some years after his residence in a particular neighbourhood,
did not set up his close carriage, but afterwards feeling it more
agreeable to do so, was astonished to find himself called upon by a host
of carriage-keeping people, who did not seem previously aware of his
existence; and rightly deeming the calls to be made upon his carriage,
rather than himself, sent round his empty carriage to deliver cards in
return. It was a biting satire on a melancholy condition of society, the
full force of which can only be perceived by such as have heard the
continual exultations of those who have dined with such a great person
on such a day, and the equally eager complaints of others, of the pride
and exclusiveness they meet with; who have listened to the long
catalogue of slights, dead cuts, and offences, and witnessed the
perpetual heart-burnings incident to such a state of things. These are
the follies that press the charm of existence out of the hearts of
thousands, and make the country often a purgatory where it might be a
paradise.
There is another cause which diminishes in a great degree the enjoyment
that might be found in the country, and that is, the almost total
cessation of walking amongst the wealthy. Since the universal use of
carriages, for anything I can see, thousands of people might just as
well be born without legs at all. It would be easy to move them from the
bed to the carriage,--thence to the dinner-table, and again to bed. In
the country, and especially in the country not far from towns, how
rarely do you see the rich except in their luxurious carriages! How
rarely do you meet them walking, or even on horseback, as you used to
do! Sir Roger de Coverley rode on horseback to the assizes in his
day--were he living now, he would roll there in his carriage--lest some
one should imagine that he had mortgaged his estate, and laid down his
carriage in retrenchment. During the twelve months that I have resided
in this neighbourhood--a neighbourhood studded all over with wealthy
houses, nothing has surprised me, and the friends who have visited me
here, so much as the great rarity of seeing any of the wealthy classes
on their legs. With the exception of the Queen and her attendant ladies,
who during the then Princess’s abode at Claremont, might be every day
met in the winter, walking in frost and snow, and facing the sharpest
winds of the sharpest weather, I scarcely remember to have met
half-a-dozen of the wealthy classes on foot a mile from their
residences. And yet what splendid, airy heaths, what delicious woods,
what nooks of bowery foliage, what views into far landscapes, are there
all around! It is true, as some of them have observed, that they walk in
their own grounds; but what grounds, however beautiful, can compensate
for the fresh feeling of the heath and the down; for the dim solemnity
of the wild wood; for open, breezy hills, the winding lane, the sight of
rustic cottages by the forest side, the tinkle of the herd or the
sheep-bell, and all the wild sounds and aspects of earth and heaven, to
be met with only in the free regions of nature? They who neglect to
walk, or confine their strolls merely to the lawn and the shrubbery,
lose nine-tenths of the enjoyment of the country. Those young men, whom
it is a pleasure to see with their knapsacks on their backs ranging over
moor and mountain, by lake or ocean, in Scotland or Wales, taste more of
the life of life in a few summer months than many dwellers in the
country ever dream of through their whole existence. I speak advisedly,
for I traverse the country in all directions, let me be where I will;
and if any _ladies_ think themselves too delicate for walking, I can
point them out delicate ladies too that have made excursions on foot
through mountain regions of five hundred miles at a time, and recur to
those seasons as amongst the most delightful of their lives.
But my desire that all should make their country life as happy as it is
capable of being made--which must be by living more to nature and less
to fashion--by using both their physical and moral energies; by
respecting themselves, and leaving the respect of others to follow as
the natural result of a true and pure tone of spirit--is detaining me
too long. I must hasten on; and amongst the most prominent of the
country excitements, give a passing word to racing. If any one wishes to
know how far the turf influences the course of country life, he has only
to read the following passage from Nimrod. “Deservedly high as Newmarket
stands in the history of the British turf, it is but as a speck on the
ocean when compared with the sum total of our provincial meetings, of
which there are about one hundred and twenty in England, Scotland, and
Wales--several of them twice in the year. Epsom, Ascot, York, Doncaster,
and Goodwood, stand first in respect of the value of the prizes, the
rank of the company, and the interest attached to them in the sporting
world; although several other cities and towns have lately exhibited
very tempting bills of fare to owners of good race-horses. In point of
antiquity we believe the Roodee of Chester claims pre-eminence of all
country race-meetings;--and certainly it has long been in high repute.
Falling early in the racing year--always the first Monday in May--it is
most numerously attended by the families of the extensive and very
aristocratic neighbourhood in which it is placed; and always continues
five days.”--_The Turf_, p. 246.
Every one who has seen the crowds of wealthy people who flock to a
celebrated race-meeting, and throng the stand and the carriage
stations, with brilliant dresses and gay equipages, may imagine, then,
how much excitement is spread through that class of society during their
stay in the country; by one hundred and twenty race-meetings in one
quarter or other of the island; especially as the greater part of these
occur during the months that they are absent from town. So having read
the passage quoted from Nimrod, he has only to turn to the volume
itself--a volume written with great ability; and, making allowance for
the author’s sporting predilections, in an excellent spirit, and he will
thus find that course described as such a horrible resort of blacklegs
and desperadoes, of traitorous jockeys and _poisoning_ trainers, as
makes one at once recoil from the recital, and wonder that our young
nobles and gentlemen should commit themselves and their fortunes to such
hands; or that the fair and the refined should consent to gaze on such a
scene of infamy. Hear Nimrod’s own words--“How many fine domains have
been shared amongst these hosts of rapacious sharks, during the last two
hundred years! and unless the system be altered--how many more are
doomed to fall into the same gulf! For, we lament to say, the evil has
increased; all heretofore, indeed, has been ‘tarts and cheesecakes’ to
the villanous proceedings of the last twenty years on the English turf.”
Let us move on to less repulsive scenes.
Amongst these may be reckoned the periodical arrivals of the bishops and
the judges. The arrival of the bishop to perform the ceremony of
confirmation, is but a triennial occurrence, but it is one of the most
imposing of the rites of the church. The flocking of the clergy and
their families to town; the processions of country children on foot, and
led by the parish clerk or schoolmaster, or in carts and other rustic
vehicles; the gathering of the children of the rich towards the church
in their white dresses, and in gay carriages; the assembling of all
classes in the common temple of their religion; the solemnity of the
address and the imposition of hands by the prelate; the stately music of
the organ, and the silent looking on of the congregated people--all
combine to produce a very striking spectacle--a spectacle which to those
who believe in its essentiality and efficacy, has something in it
touching and beautiful.
But perhaps the parade of the assize time, is the most picturesque of
this class of occurrences. There is more of the old English ceremony,
custom, and costume about it. The judges who go through the land as the
representatives of majesty, certainly go through it _en prince_. Nothing
can be more unlike than their progress to, and their state in, the
courts in town, and the same things in their provincial tour of justice.
In town you may see the Lord Chief Justice mount his horse at his own
door, and ride quietly away towards Westminster Hall. You may see Lord
Abinger in the Court of Exchequer, sitting very much at his ease in his
black gown and wig of modest dimensions, dispatching business in a
work-a-day manner; but in the country you find these very men arrayed in
their scarlet and ermine, seated in much greater state, and dispensing
justice in a much fuller court than, except on extraordinary occasions,
attends them in town.
The high-sheriff of every county, selected from its best families, in
preparation for the arrival of the county judge, has put his equipage
and train in order. His carriage, his horses, his harness, all have
undergone a rigid examination, and are all put into the highest
condition that paint, gilding, varnish, lining, and plate, can bestow;
or if he be a young man of some spirit and ambition, he has purchased a
new carriage for the occasion. His tenants and household servants, to
the number of forty or fifty, have been put into a new livery in the cut
of the old yeomen, and generally of some bright or peculiar colour,
green, blue, white, or delicate drab, as indeed the livery of the
gentlemen may be. Mounted on their horses, and with their javelins or
halberds, and preceded by two trumpeters, who, old Aubrey can tell you,
are a very ancient essential on such occasions, they escort the sheriff
on his way to meet the judges. The sheriff who has thus showily
appointed what are provincially termed his javelin-men, has not in the
meantime neglected himself. He has put on at least a court dress, and in
cases where he has happened to be a man of taste, and a man of figure to
boot, he has put on a rich suit of the fashion of Sir Charles Grandison,
or of some one of his ancestors, as he stands in full-length portraiture
in his family gallery. He issues from his hall, arrayed perhaps in a
rich mulberry coloured coat with huge embroidered cuffs and
button-holes, huge gold buttons, and lining of primrose serge; a
splendid waistcoat of gold brocaded satin, with ample pockets and flaps
reaching half-way to his knees; satin breeches, and silk stockings with
immense clocks; large gold buckles at his knees and upon his shoes. Add
to this his sword, his cocked hat, and his cravat and ruffles of fine
point lace, and you have the high-sheriff in all his glory, just as we
saw him in one of our county assize courts not many years ago, sitting
on the right hand of the judge; and it must be confessed in admirable
keeping with his old-world robes of scarlet and ermine. Well, he enters
the county town with his troop of javelin-men, his trumpeters blowing
stoutly before him. He takes up his lodgings there, and on the morning
of the judge’s approach, he marches out in the same style, followed by a
long train of the gentlemen and tradesmen of the place, who are anxious
to testify their respect to the ancient forms of justice, and the
representative of the monarch. He advances some mile or two on the way
by which the judge is to arrive. There the procession halts, generally
in a position which commands a view of the road by which the judge is
expected. Anon, there is a stir, a looking out amongst them, your eye
follows theirs, and you see a carriage, dusty and travel-soiled, come
driving rapidly on. It is that of the judge. As they drive up, the
javelin-men and gentlemen uncover; the sheriff descends from his
carriage; his gowned and bewigged lordship descends from his; the
sheriff makes his bow and his compliments; the judge enters the carriage
of the sheriff with him, his own carriage falls into the rear, and the
procession now moves on towards the town, with bannered trumpets
blowing, and amid a continually increasing crowd of spectators. There is
something very quaint and old English in the whole affair; and as I have
seen the sheriff and his train thus, waiting the approach of the judge
on some rising ground in the public road, the scene has brought back to
my imagination a feeling of the past times--simpler in heart than the
present, but more formal in manner, and perhaps fonder of solemn parade.
But the bells are ringing merrily to welcome the learned judge, and
thousands are thronging to see the sight of the sheriff and his men, and
to catch a glimpse of the judge’s wig as the coach passes, and many of
them to wonder how the sheriff can seem so much at his ease with such an
awful man: while within the strong walls of the prison, the sounds of
bells and the trampling feet of the crowds without, are causing stout
hearts and miserable hearts to tremble and feel chill.
Well, the procession and the throng “go sounding through the town,” and
the court being opened in due form, they arrive at the judge’s lodgings,
whence, after a suitable time allowed for the judge’s refreshment, they
proceed to church. Whatever may be the effect of this custom of the
judge’s going to church before proceeding to discharge his awful duties
of deciding upon the destinies of his fellow men, it is a beautiful one,
and bespeaks in those who instituted it, a just sense of the value of
human life, and of the true source whence all right judgment must
proceed. It was well, and more than well, that the judge should be sent
to hear from the Christian minister, that the temper in which a judge
should sit to decide the fate of his fellow mortals, should be that of
the Christian--the divine union of justice and mercy. It was well that
he should be reminded that every act of his judgment in the court about
to open, must one day be rejudged, in a court and before a judge, from
which there can be no appeal.
As they move on towards the great mother-church, thousands on thousands
throng to gaze. Every window presents its quota of protruded heads;
every flight of steps before the doors of houses, and every other
elevated spot, is occupied. Boys are hanging by lamp-posts, and on iron
palisades, like bats. The procession used to be much enlivened by the
presence of the mayor and corporation in their robes, and with the mace
borne before them; but the New Corporation Act has led to a woful
stripping of this pageant. The sheriff selects the clergyman to preach
on the occasion, who is generally some young friend or relative whom he
wishes to bring into notice. This ceremony being over, the judge returns
to the court; the grand jury, selected from the gentlemen of the county,
present their bills, and the trials proceed. In the sheriff’s gallery
may be seen some of his friends, perhaps the ladies of his family and
other acquaintances, with others, all introduced by ticket; on the bench
by the judge, may often be seen seated with the sheriff, some great man
or lady of the neighbourhood, especially if some trial in which one of
their own body, some disputed will which involves a large property, or
similar cause of interest, draws them from their homes, and fills the
court to suffocation. While the court continues, day by day you see the
train of javelin-men come marching on foot with the state carriage of
the sheriff, to conduct him from his lodgings to those of the judge, and
back again at the close of the court in the evening, till the trials are
ended; and judge, sheriff, gay carriage, with its splendid hammer-cloth,
jolly coachman, and slim footmen, in their cocked hats and flaxen wigs,
javelin-men, and crowd, all meet and vanish away, and the excitement of
the assize is over for another half-year.
Such are the principal country excitements; and to these may be added
those of another class, which have sprung up of late years, and have
done much good--the floral and horticultural shews. These have been
warmly patronized by the aristocracy; and it forms a striking feature in
modern country life, to see carriages and pedestrians hastening, on
certain days to certain places, where different flowers and fruits, in
their respective seasons, are displayed with great taste, and with
brilliant effect. The place of meeting is sometimes at a country inn,
where, on the bowling-green, tents are pitched, in which the flowers or
fruits are exhibited, and the whole scene is extremely gay. Such a one I
saw at Kingston Hill, near Richmond Park--a Dahlia shew: on the end of
the house an invitation to all England being gorgeously emblazoned in
dahlia-flowers, surmounted by the crown royal, and the good English
initials Q. V.; looking as though the worthy horticulturists meant to
set the rational example of using the English language to the English
people.
PART II.
LIFE OF THE AGRICULTURAL POPULATION.
CHAPTER I.
THE ENGLISH FARMER.
There are few things which give one such a feeling of the prosperity of
the country, as seeing the country people pour into a large town on
market-day. There they come, streaming along all the roads that lead to
it from the wide country round. The footpaths are filled with a hardy
and homely succession of pedestrians, men and women, with their baskets
on their arms, containing their butter, eggs, apples, mushrooms,
walnuts, nuts, elderberries, blackberries, bundles of herbs, young
pigeons, fowls, or whatever happens to be in season. There are boys and
girls too, similarly loaded, and also with baskets of birds’ nests in
spring, cages of young birds, and old birds, baskets of tame rabbits,
and bunches of cowslips, primroses, and all kinds of flowers and country
productions imaginable. The carriage-road is equally alive, with people
riding and driving along; farmers and country gentlemen, country
clergymen, parish overseers, and various other personages, drawn to the
market-town by some real or imagined business, are rattling forward on
horseback, or in carriages of various kinds, gigs, and spring-carts, and
carts without springs. There are carriers’ wagons, and covered carts
without end, many of them shewing from their open fronts, whole troops
of women snugly seated; while their dogs chained beneath, go struggling
and barking along, pushing their heads forward in their collars every
minute as if they would hang themselves. This is in the morning; and in
the afternoon you see them pouring out again, and directing their course
to many a far-off hamlet and old-fashioned abode. But there is a wide
difference between coming in and going out. The wagons and carts go
heavily and soberly, for they are laden with good solid commodities,
groceries and draperies, mops, brushes, hardware and crockery,
newspapers for the politicians, and sundry parcels of teas, sugars, and
soaps, and such et ceteras, for the village shops; but the farmers go
riding and driving out three times as fast as they came in, for they are
primed with good dinners and strong beer. They have chaffered, and
smoked, and talked with the great grazier and the great corn-factor, and
their horses are full of corn too, and away they go, in fours and fives,
filling the whole width of the road, and raising a dust, if there be the
least dust to be raised, or making the mud fly in all directions; away
they go, talking all together, while their horses are trotting at such a
pace as one would think would shake the very teeth out of their heads.
The sober foot-people who are trudging homeward more soberly than they
came, say, as they fly past, “One wouldn’t think times very bad
neither.” And the carriers hold their horses’ heads as they rush past,
and smiling significantly, say, just as they are gone past,--“Well done
my lads! that’s it; go it my lads, go it! Yo riden, though your horses
go a-foot!”
There is no class of men, if times are but tolerably good, that enjoy
themselves so highly as farmers. They are little kings. Their concerns
are not huddled into a corner, as those of the town tradesman are. In
town, many a man who turns thousands of pounds per week, is hemmed in
close by buildings, and cuts no figure at all. A narrow shop, a
contracted warehouse, without an inch of room besides to turn him, on
any hand; without a yard, a stable, or outhouse of any description;
perhaps hoisted aloft, up three or four pair of dirty stairs, is all the
room that the wealthy tradesman often can bless himself with; and there,
day after day, month after month, year after year, he is to be found,
like a bat in a hole of a wall, or a toad in the heart of a stone, or of
an oak tree. Spring, and summer, and autumn, go round; sunshine and
flowers spread over the world; the sweetest breezes blow, the sweetest
waters murmur along the vales, but they are all lost upon him; he is the
doleful prisoner of Mammon, and so he lives and dies. The farmer would
not take the wealth of the world on such terms. His concerns, however
small, spread themselves out in a pleasant amplitude both to his eye and
heart. His house stands in its own stately solitude; his offices and
outhouses stand round extensively, without any stubborn and limiting
contraction; his acres stretch over hill and dale; there his flocks and
herds are feeding; there his labourers are toiling,--he is king and sole
commander there. He lives amongst the purest air and the most delicious
quiet. Often when I see those healthy, hardy, full-grown sons of the
soil going out of town, I envy them the freshness and the repose of the
spots to which they are going. Ample old-fashioned kitchens, with their
chimney-corners of the true, projecting, beamed and seated construction,
still remaining; blazing fires in winter, shining on suspended hams and
flitches, guns supported on hooks above, dogs basking on the hearth
below; cool, shady parlours in summer, with open windows, and odours
from garden and shrubbery blowing in; gardens wet with purest dews, and
humming at noon-tide with bees; and green fields and verdurous trees, or
deep woodlands lying all round, where a hundred rejoicing voices of
birds or other creatures are heard, and winds blow to and fro, full of
health and life-enjoyment. How enviable do such places seem to the
fretted spirits of towns, who are compelled not only to bear their
burthen of cares, but to enter daily into the public strife against
selfish evil and ever-spreading corruption. When one calls to mind the
simple abundance of farm-houses, their rich cream and milk, and
unadulterated butter, and bread grown upon their own lands, sweet as
that which Christ broke, and blessed as he gave to his disciples; their
fruits ripe and fresh plucked from the sunny wall, or the garden bed, or
the pleasant old orchard; when one casts one’s eyes upon, or calls to
one’s memory the aspect of these houses, many of them so antiquely
picturesque, or so bright-looking and comfortable, in deep retired
valleys, by beautiful streams, or amongst fragrant woodlands, one cannot
help saying with King James of Scotland, when he met Johnny Armstrong:--
What want these knaves that a king should have?
But they are not outward and surrounding advantages merely, which give
zest to the life of the farmer. He is more proud of it, and more
attached to it, than any other class of men, be they whom they may, are
of theirs. The whole heart, soul, and being of the farmer are in his
profession. The members of other professions and trades, however full
they may be of their concerns, have their mouths tied up by the
etiquette of society. A man is not allowed to talk of his trade concerns
except at the risk of being laughed at, and being set down as an
egotistic ignoramus. But who shall laugh at or scout the farmer for
talking of his concerns? Of nothing else does he, in nine cases out of
ten, think, talk, or care. And though he may be called a bore by all
other classes, what concerns it him? for other classes are just as great
bores to him, and he seeks not their company. The farmers are a large
class, and they associate and converse principally with each other.
“Their talk is of bullocks,” it is true, but to them it is the most
interesting talk of all. What is so delightful to them as to meet at
each other’s houses, and with bright glasses of nectarous ale, or more
potent spirit sparkling before them, and pipe in mouth, to talk of
markets, rents, tithes, new improvements, and the promise of crops? To
walk over their lands of a Sunday afternoon together, and pronounce on
the condition of growing corn, turnips, and grass; on this drainage, or
that neighbour’s odd management; on the appearance of sheep, cattle, and
horses. And this is to be excused, and in a great degree to be admired.
For those are no artificial objects on which they expend their lives and
souls; they are the delightful things of nature on which they operate;
and nature operates with them in all their labours, and sweetens them to
their spirits. This is the grand secret of their everlasting attachment
to, and enjoyment of agricultural life. They work with nature, and only
modulate and benefit by her functions, as she takes up, quickens, and
completes the work of their hands. There is a living principle in all
their labours, which distinguishes them from most other trades. The
earth gives its strength to the seed they throw into it--to the cattle
that walk upon it. The winds blow, the waters run for them; the very
frosts and snows of winter give salutary checks to the rankness of
vegetation, and lighten the soil, and destroy what is noxious for them;
and every principle of animal and vegetable existence and organization
co-operates to support and enrich them. There is a charm in this which
must last while the spirit of man feels the stirrings of the spirit and
power of God around him. It may be said that rude farmers do not reason
on these things in this manner. No, in many, too many, instances I grant
it; but they feel. There is scarcely any bosom so cloddish but feels
more or less of this, and by no other cause can an explanation be given
of the enthusiasm of farmers for their profession. It is not because
they can sooner enrich themselves by it--that they are more independent
in it--that they have greater social advantages in it. In all these
particulars the balance is in favour of the active and enterprising
tradesman; but it is this charm which has infused its sweetness into the
bosoms of all rural people in all ages of the world. From the days of
the patriarchs to the present, what expressions of delight the greatest
minds have uttered on behalf of such a life. Think of Homer, Theocritus,
Virgil, and Horace; of Cicero, whom I have elsewhere quoted; and of the
many great men of this country, some of whom too I have noticed, who
have devoted themselves with such eagerness to it.
That farmers are as intelligent as a parallel grade of society in large
towns I do not mean to assert; that they are as truly aware of, and as
united to defend, their real interests I will assert as little. Their
solitary and isolated mode of existence weighs against them in these
points; but that they have generally a sounder morality than a similar
class of townsmen is indisputable. They have a simplicity of mind as
well as manners that is more than an equivalent for the polish and
conventional customs of society, and with this a cordiality that is very
delightful, and very rarely now to be found--the good, homely heartiness
of Old English days.
They, indeed, so vividly enjoy the common blessings of life, from their
vigorous health, and unvitiated appetites, as well as from the cravings
of their inner being, finding their food in the daily communion with
nature, instead of that book-knowledge which is so extensively diffused
through all classes of the city, and which, too commonly, while it
quickens the intellect, and widens the sphere of observation, I am sorry
to say, deadens the human sympathies and distorts the heart--that they
make so much of their kindness appear in heaping upon you bodily
comforts and refreshments as is often truly ludicrous. They would have
you eat and drink for ever. One meal succeeds to another with a
profusion and an importunity of hospitality that are overwhelming. They
eat their bread with a sweetness and a capacity, generated by their
active and laborious habits, that we, who lead more sedentary lives, and
with minds and energies dissipated by a hundred objects unknown to them,
have no idea of. People of all other classes place a great portion of
their happiness in giving and eating great feasts; but a farmer seems to
think all the good things of life are involved in feasting, and would
feast you not once a year, but every day, and all day long, if he could.
Let us just glance at the routine of one day of good fellowship, such as
is seen in farm-houses where there is plenty, and yet no great pretence
to gentility. We have seen many such scenes.
The farmer invites his friends to dine with him. He will have a party.
Suppose it at some period of the year when he is least busy; for his
engagements depending on the progress of the seasons, and his whole
wealth being at the mercy of the elements, he cannot postpone his
duties, but must take them as they fall out. Suppose it then just before
the commencement of hay-harvest, for then he has a short pause, between
the putting in of his last crop of potatoes or corn, shutting up his
fields, and clearing his green-corn lands, and that moment when the
first scythe enters his hay-fields, when a course of arduous and anxious
labours begins, that will not cease till all his crops are safely
housed,--hay, corn, beans, pease, and potatoes. Suppose at this pause in
the growing time of summer, or after harvest, or amid the festive days
of Christmas, he feels himself comparatively at leisure, in good
spirits, and disposed to enjoy himself. He and his wife arrange their
plans. Invitations are sent. On market-day he lays in all
necessaries,--tea, coffee, prime cuts of beef and other meat; wine and
spirits; sugar and spices. At home there is busy preparation. His garden
is cleaned up; an operation of rare occurrence with a busy farmer, who
thinks so much of his fields that he thinks but little of his garden.
His stables and his rick-yard are put in order. The very manes and tails
of his horses are trimmed, for all will have to pass under the critical
notice of his friends, and he feels his professional character at stake.
In the house there is equal activity. There is a world of cleaning and
setting in order. Floors are scoured. The best carpets are put down.
This room is found to want fresh staining; painting wants doing here and
there, both within and without. Trees also want nailing and trimming on
the walls; and it is probable there may want some spout repairing, or
tiles renewing, that have often been talked of, but never could have
time found for their doing. The house and all about it look fifty per
cent. the better. The neatly cleaned walks and closely mown grass-plots;
the brightly cleaned windows, and the scarlet curtains, and the purely
white blinds seen within, give an air of completeness that is very
satisfactory.
And then within begin the mighty preparations for the feast. Geese,
turkeys, ducks and fowls are killed and pulled, and part are cooked, and
part are made ready for cooking. If the farmer shoots, and it be the
season, there are hares and rabbits, pheasants and partridges, brought
to the larder; if he do not, he makes friends with the keeper, who
occasionally takes a social pipe and glass with him; or he makes a
direct request to his landlord for this indulgence. Hams are boiled,
pies are made, puddings of the richest composition are put together. If
it be Christmas, loud is the chopping of meat for minced-pies, busy the
mixing of spices; and the washing and picking of currants and raisins;
and pork-pies and sausages of most savoury and approved manipulation are
raised into material existence. If the sucking-pig escapes whipping--and
we hope no honest farmer is now cruel enough for this operation--creams
and syllabubs do not; they are whipped, not to death, but into life.
There are blanc-mange and jellies, crystalline and fragrant; clouted
creams, and cream of strawberries, raspberries, and I know not what
melting and delicious things. And O! such cheesecakes, and such patties,
and such little cakes of various names and natures, for tea, and
_entremets_, and dessert. I see the oven-door open and shut, as the iron
tray of nicely laden patty-pans goes into the oven, or comes out with a
rich perfection, and with odours most delicious, most mouth-melting,
most inexpressible! The good and skilful dame, and the no less skilful
and comely daughters, if she have them, and they are grown up to years
of discretion in these delicate and culinary arts--what is not their
depth of occupation! What glowing looks are theirs; what speculations;
what contrivances and anticipations! I would fain take an easy chair in
some cool corner of this milk-and-honey-flowing kitchen, and watch all
their sweet employment, and hear all their sweet words in a grateful
silence. But they are far from the end of their labours. Nuts, walnuts,
apples and pears, and other fruit, according as the season may be, are
produced from their stores, or from the sunny walls and trees, wiped
from every trace of mould or dust from the store-room, and placed in
their proper receivers of glass, or china, or possibly of plate. Wine
and spirit decanters are to be washed and carefully dried, and to be
charged with their bright contents. The discovery of the richest cheese
in the whole cheese-room is to be made by tasting; butter is to be
moulded in small cakes, and imprinted with patterns of the deepest and
most elegant figure, and a thousand other things made, or done, of which
the tasting were to be desired rather than the catalogue to be
particularized, for, wonderful and manifold are all thy works, O thou
accomplished spouse of a wealthy farmer!
What dainties has that greater oven received into its more capacious
cavern. Bread of the most exquisite fineness; and pies of varied
character--fruit, pork, beef-steak, and giblet--if in Devon or Cornwall,
_sweet_ giblet, a pie that all England besides knows not
of,--figgy-bread, and saffron-cake of transcendant brilliance and taste.
And then comes the great day! The guests are invited to dinner; but they
have been enjoined to _come early_, and they come early with a
vengeance. They will not come as the guests of night-loving citizens and
aristocrats come, at from six to nine in the evening;--no, at ten and
eleven in the morning you shall see their faces, that never yet were
ashamed of day-light, and that tell of fresh air and early hours. Then
come rattling in sundry vehicles with their cargoes of men and women;
lively salutations are exchanged; the horses are led away to the
stables, and the guests into the house to doff great coats and cloaks,
hats and bonnets, and sit down to luncheon. And there it is ready set
out. “They’ll want something after their drive,” says the host. “To be
sure,” says the hostess; and there is plenty in truth. A boiled ham, a
neat’s tongue; a piece of cold beef; fowls and beef-steak-pie; tarts,
and bread, cheese and butter; coffee for the ladies, and fine old ale
for the gentlemen.
“Now do help yourselves,” exclaims the host from one end of the table,
“I am sure you must be very hungry after such a ride.” “I am sure you
must indeed,” echoes the hostess from the other, while a dozen voices
cry all at once, “O, really I don’t think I can touch a bit. We got
breakfast the moment before we set off;” and all the time deep are the
incisions made into the various viands: and plentifully heaped are
plates; and bright liquor is poured into glasses, and a great deal of
talk of this and that, and inquiries after this and that person go on; a
hearty luncheon is made, and the gentlemen are ready to set out and look
about them. They are warned by the hostess to remember that dinner will
be on table at one o’clock--“exactly at one!” and assuming hats and
sticks, away they go.
While they perambulate the farm, and pass learned judgments on land,
cattle, and crops; and make besides excursions into neighbouring lands,
to some particular experiment in management, or extraordinary production
of combined art and nature, our hostess shews her female friends her
dairy, her cheese-room, her poultry-yard, and discussions as scientific
are going on, on the best modes of fattening calves, rearing turkey
broods, and on all the most approved manipulations of cheese and butter.
The quantities produced from a certain number of cows are compared, and
many wonders expressed that lands of apparent equality of richness
should some yield little butter and much cheese, and others little
cheese and much butter; facts well known to all such ladies, but not
easy of explanation by heads that pretend to see further into the heart
of a difficulty than they do. A walk is probably proposed and undertaken
through the garden and orchard, and flowers and fruits are descanted on;
and all this time in the house roasting, and boiling, and baking, are
going on gloriously. Savoury steams are rolling about under the
ceilings; busy damsels with faces rosier than ever, are running to and
fro on the floors; stable-boys are turned into knife-cleaners, and
plough-lads into peelers of potatoes and watchers of boiling pots, and
turnspits.
The hour arrives; and a sound of loud voices somewhere at hand announces
that our agricultural friends are returned punctually to their time,
with many a joke on their fears of the ladies’ tongues. Not that they
seemed to want any dinner--no, they made such a luncheon; but they had
such a natural fear of being scolded. Well, here they all are;--and here
are the ladies all in full dress. Hands that have been handling prime
stock, or rooting in the earth, or thrust into hay-ricks and corn-heaps,
are washed, and down they sit to such a dinner as might satisfy a crew
of shipwrecked men. There are seldom any of your “wishy-washy soups,”
except it be very cold weather, and seldom more than two courses; but
then they _are_ courses! All of the meat kind seems set on the table at
once. Off go the covers, and what a perplexing but unconsumable variety!
Such pieces of roast beef, veal, and lamb; such hams, and turkeys, and
geese; such game, and pies of pigeons or other things equally good, with
vegetables of all kinds in season--peas, potatoes, cauliflowers,
kidney-beans, lettuces, and whatever the season can produce. The most
potent of ale and porter, the most crystalline and cool water, are
freely supplied, and wine for those that will. When these things have
had ample respect paid to them, they vanish, and the table is covered
with plum-puddings and fruit tarts, cheesecakes, syllabubs, and all the
nicknackery of whipped creams and jellies that female invention can
produce. And then, a dessert of equal profusion. Why should we tantalize
ourselves with the vision of all those nuts, walnuts, almonds, raisins,
fruits, and confections? Enough that they are there; that the wine
circulates--foreign and English--port and sherry--gooseberry and
damson--malt and birch--elderflower and cowslip,--and loud is the
clamour of voices male and female. If there be not quite so much
refinement of tone and manner, quite so much fastidiousness of phrase
and action, as in some other places, there is at least more hearty
laughter, more natural jocularity, and many a
Random shot of country wit,
as Burns calls it. A vast of talk there is of all the country round;
every strange circumstance; every incident and change of condition, and
new alliance amongst their mutual friends and acquaintances, pass under
review. The ladies withdraw; and the gentlemen draw together; spirits
take place of wine, and pipes are lighted. We know what subjects will
interest them--farming improvements and politics--and so it goes till
tea-time.
When summoned to tea, there are additional faces. The pastor and his
wife, perhaps a son and daughter, or daughters, are there; and there is
the clerk too,--the very model of respect and reverence towards his
clerical superior. Whatever that learned authority asserts, this zealous
and “dearly-beloved Moses” testifies. He calls attention to what the
vicar says; he repeats with great satisfaction his sayings. There too,
is the surgeon, and often the veterinary surgeon, especially as he also
is often a farmer, and in intercourse with all the farmers far and near.
This may seem an odd jumble of ranks, but it is no more odd than true.
Who that has seen anything of rural life has not seen odder medleys?
Besides, money in all grades of society can do miracles. There are
clergymen in many parishes, who maintain their own ideas of dignity, and
seldom move out of the circle of squires and dames; but there are
others, and in perfectly rural districts there are abundance of others,
that know how to mix more freely with the yeomanry of their flocks, and
lose nothing neither. If they respect themselves, they insure the
respect, and what is better, the attachment of their hearers.
But the vicar’s presence on such a day is felt. There is a more palpable
approximation towards silence;--a drawing tighter of the reins of
conversational freedom. The great talkers of after-dinner are now become
great listeners, and often on such occasions I have seen a scene worthy
of the sound sense of English yeomen; for the pastor addresses his
observations and inquiries now to this individual, and now to that; and
now converses in a tone of pleasant humour with the ladies; so that you
may often hear as sober discussions on the passing topics of the day,
and on the prospects of the country, and especially of that part of it
to which they belong, delivered in a homely manner perhaps, but with a
discrimination and practical knowledge that are very gratifying. And on
the part of the females you shall see so many symptoms of
good-heartedness and real matronly mind as make you feel that sense,
soul, and true sympathies, are of no particular grade, or particular
style of life.
But there must be a dance for the young, and there are cards for the
more sedate; and then again, to a supper as profuse, with its hot game,
and fowls, and fresh pastry, as if it had been the sole meal cooked in
the house that day. The pastor and his company depart; the wine and
spirits circulate; all begin to talk of parting, and are loth to part,
till it grows late; and they have some of them six or seven miles to go,
perhaps, on a pitch-dark night, through by-ways, and with roads not to
be boasted of. All at once, however, up rise the men to go, for their
wives, who asked and looked with imploring eyes in vain, now shew
themselves cloaked and bonneted, and the carriages are heard with
grinding wheels at the door. There is a boisterous shaking of hands, a
score of invitations to come and do likewise, given to their
entertainers, and they mount and away! When you see the blackness of the
night, and consider that they have not eschewed good liquor, and
perceive at what a rate they drive away, you expect nothing less than to
hear the next day, that they have dashed their vehicles to atoms against
some post, or precipitated themselves into some quarry; but all is
right. They best know their own capabilities, and are at home, safe and
sound.
Such is a specimen of the festivities of what may be called the middle
and substantial class of farmers; and the same thing holds, in degree,
to the very lowest grade of them. The smallest farmer will bring you out
the very best he has; he will spare nothing, on a holiday occasion; and
his wife will present you with her simple slice of cake, and a glass of
currant or cowslip wine, with an _empressement_, and a welcome that you
feel to the heart is real, and a bestowal of a real pleasure to the
offerer.
CHAPTER II.
THE ENGLISH FARMER, AS OPERATED UPON BY MODERN CAUSES AND THEORIES.
Cobbett complains that the farmer has been spoiled by the growth of
luxurious habits and effeminacy in the nation. That the simple old
furniture is cast out of their houses; that carpets are laid on their
floors; that there are sofas and pianos to be found where there used to
be wooden benches and the spinning-wheel; that the daughters are sent to
boarding-school, instead of to market; and the sons, instead of growing
up sturdy husbandmen, like their fathers, are made clerks, shopkeepers,
or some such “skimmy-dish things.”
It is true enough that the general style of living and furnishing has
progressed amongst the farmers as amongst all other classes of the
community. And perhaps there has been too much of this. But it should be
recollected that Cobbett was opposed to popular education altogether. He
would have the rural population physically well off, but it should be
physically only. He would have them feed and work and sleep like their
sturdy horses or oxen: but is such a state desirable? Is it not far more
noble, far more truly human, to have all classes partaking, as far as
their circumstances will allow them, of the pleasures of mind? I would
have real knowledge go hand in hand with real religious principle and
moral feeling, and where they go, a certain and inseparable degree of
refinement of manner and embellishment of abode will go with them.
Would I have the follies and affectations of the modern boarding-school
go into the farm-house? By no means. It is by the circulation of
healthful knowledge that all this is to be rooted out, and the race of
finical and half-genteel, and wholly ridiculous boarding-school misses
to be changed into usefully taught and really valuable and amiable
women. We should avoid one extreme as the other.
It should be recollected, too, that amongst farmers are to be found men
of all ranks and grades. Farming has been, and is, a fashionable
pursuit. We have ducal farmers, and from them all degrees downwards.
Gentlemen’s stewards, educated men, are farmers; and many farmers are
persons whose capital employed in their extensive concerns would
purchase the estates of nobles. All these, of course, live and partake
of the habits, general character, and refinements of the classes to
which they, by their wealth, really belong: and amongst the medium class
of farmers we find as little aspiring of gentility, as amongst the same
grade of tradesmen. Nay, go into the really rural and retired parts of
the country, and they are simple and rustic enough. Let those who doubt
it go into the dales of Yorkshire; into the Peak, and retirements of
Derbyshire; into the vales of Nottinghamshire, and midland counties; let
them traverse Buckinghamshire and Shropshire; let them go into the wild
valleys of Cornwall; ay, into the genuine country of almost any part of
England, and they will find stone floors and naked tables, and pewter
plates, and straw beds, and homely living enough in all conscience. They
may see oxen ploughing in the fields with simple, heavy, wooden yokes,
such as were used five hundred years ago; and horses harnessed with
collars of straw, and an old rope or two, not altogether worth
half-a-crown, doing the tillage of large farms. They may eat a
turnip-pie in one place, and oatmeal cake, or an oatmeal pudding in
another, and bless their stars if they see a bit of butcher’s meat once
a week. Yes, there are primitive living and primitive habits left over
vast districts of England yet, which, we trust, under a better view of
things, will receive no change, except such as springs from the gradual
and sound growth of true knowledge.
But they bring up their sons to be clerks and such “skimmy-dish things”
in towns. Ay, there is the rub; and this we owe to the rage for large
rentals inspired by the war prices; by false notions of improvement
generated during the heyday of farming prosperity; by gentlemen making
stewards of lawyers, who have no real knowledge of farming interests,
and can, therefore, have no sympathies with the small farmer, or
patience with him in the day of his difficulty, and whose only object is
to get the greatest rent at the easiest rate. But above all, this we owe
to the detestable doctrine of political economy, by which a dozen of
moderate farms are swallowed up in one overgrown one,--a desert, from
which both small farmers and labourers were compelled to depart, to make
way for machinery, and Irish labourers at fourpence a day. Where were
the farmers to put their sons when they were brought up? The small
farms, the natural resource for divided capitals and commencements in
agricultural life, were, in a great measure, annihilated; and a most
useful race of men as far as possible rooted out. Thank God! this
abomination and worse than Egyptian plague, is now seen through, and
what is better, is _felt_. We shall yet have farms from fifty to a
hundred acres, where men of small capital may try their fortunes, and
have a chance of mounting up, instead of being thrust down into the
hopeless condition of serfs. We may have humble homesteads, where a
father and his sons may work together; where labour may await their
days, and an independent fireside their hours of rest. Where a lowly,
but a happy people may congregate at Christmas and other festivals, and
the old games of blindman’s-buff, turn-trencher, and forfeits, may long
be pursued in the evening firelight of rustic rooms.
The farmer has had his ups and downs. During the war he was too
prosperous; since then he has been at times ground to the dust by low
prices and high rents. Heaven send him a better day! We would see him as
he is, in a healthy state of the country,--a rural king, sowing his corn
and reaping his harvest with a glad heart, and amid the rejoicings of a
numerous peasantry.
Of the great advance in the science of farming; of the various improved
modes of management, and ingenious machines invented for facilitating
the farmer’s labours, I have spoken under the head of the country
gentleman’s pursuits and recreations. One or two other observations on
the farmer and his life, may as well be given here.
One of the greatest drawbacks to the pleasantness of their abodes, is to
be found in their miry roads and yards, and the stagnant pools and
drainages that, in the greater number of instances, stand somewhere
about them. One would think that the latter nuisances were intended by
them to neutralize the effects of so much good fresh air as they have;
to act as a check, lest they should, surrounded as they are, by every
conducive to health and longevity, really live too long. There is
scarcely a farm-house but has one of those drain pools, into which all
the liquid refuse of their yards runs, and into which dead dogs and cats
find their way as a matter of course. In summer, these places are green
over, and often stand thick with the bubbles of a pestiferous
fermentation; to all which they appear totally insensible, and must be
really so, or they would contrive to locate them at a greater distance,
or have them carried in a water-cart, and dispersed over their grass
lands, where they would be of infinite service.
It is in winter that they are beset by miry roads; and have often yards
so deep in dirt, that you cannot reach them on foot without getting over
the shoes. They and their men stalk to and fro through a six-inch depth
of mire as if they trod on a Turkey carpet; but I have often amused
myself with imagining what would be the consternation of a cockney, or
indeed of any townsman only accustomed to clean roads and good
pavements, to find himself set down in the middle of one of those lanes
that lead up to farm-houses, or away into their fields, or even in one
of their fold-yards. But to find himself in one of these, as I have done
many a time on a dark night, and with a necessity of proceeding,--oh
patience! patience! then it is really felt to be a virtue. To slip, and
plunge, and flounder on in such a darksome, deep-rutted, slipping and
stick-fast road--sometimes the puddle soaking into your shoes, and
sometimes sent by the pressure of your tread as from a squirt into your
face:--“hic labor, hoc opus est.”
A few hours’ work now and then with an iron scraper in the yard, and a
spade to let off the water in the lanes into the ditches, and the
nuisance were prevented. One would have thought that the universal
excellence of all the highways now would have made them sensible of the
luxury of a good, dry footing; but they seem really quite unaware of it,
except you point it out, and then they will tell you in good humour
that they have road-menders at work regularly twice a-year--dry weather
and frost!
I must here, too, say a word on the subject of small farms. Political
economists, carrying out their theories of the power of capital, and the
division of employments, have written many very plausible things in
recommendation of large farms. They tell you that the men of capital,
who alone can hold large farms, can alone afford to avail themselves of
the aid of machinery for accelerating their operations; of expensive
manures, such as bones, the ashes of bog-earth, such as are burnt in
Berks and Wiltshire; and of new and improved breeds of sheep and cattle;
all of which require long purses, that can pay, and wait for distant
returns. These are all excellent reasons for having such men and such
farms in the country, by which the march and spirit of improvement may
be kept up, and from which, as from reservoirs, may, in due course,
overflow the advantages they introduce to their less wealthy neighbours
at a cheaper rate; but they are no arguments at all against the
retention of less farms. It is, in fact, a well-known circumstance, that
the speculative and amateur farmers generally farm at a greater expense
than their neighbours, an expense, in most cases, never fully made up by
the returns, and often really ruinous. That enlightened, systematic
views, the division of employments, and a judicious outlay of capital,
not always in every man’s power, enable large farmers to sell at a lower
rate than smaller and poorer farmers, is to a certain degree true, but
by no means to the extent supposed. No farm which exceeds the ready and
daily survey of the cultivator will be found to produce these
advantages. Beyond that extent, there must be overlookers employed, and
these must be maintained at a great, and probably greater cost than a
small farmer lives at on his rented farm; nor can such a system be
expected to carry the intentions of the principal into effect with a
success like that of his personal surveillance. The small farmer has
motives to exertion which do not exist in a troop of hired labourers.
Slave labour is notoriously inferior to the labour of freemen, because
the freeman has internal motives that the slave never can have; and in
the same manner a small farmer who labours on his own rented farm has
motives to exertion that the common labourer, who labours for a daily
sum, cannot have. If the small farmer employ any of these, he employs
them under the influence of his own eye and example, and thereby
communicates a stimulus that is absent on a larger scale of cultivation.
The small farmer lives economically; frequently, there is no question,
more economically, and yet better than the labourer, because he has all
his faculties and energies at work to improve his farm and better his
condition; circumstances that do not operate on the labourer, who
receives just a bare sufficiency in his wage, and sees no possibility,
and therefore entertains no hope, of accumulation. The small farmer
works hard himself; his children, if he have them, assist him, and his
wife too, who also is a manager and a worker. He looks round him, for
his eyes are sharpened by his interests, and observes the plans, and
measures, and improvements of his wealthier neighbour, adopts what he
can of them, and often makes cheap and ingenious substitutes for others.
Even if it were a fact, that the large farmer could drive the small
farmer out of the country, it would be a circumstance most deeply to be
deplored. It would extinguish a class of men of hardy, homely, and
independent habits--a serious loss to the nation. It would break those
steps out of the ladder of human aspiration, and the improvement of
condition, that would have a most fatal influence on all society. An
impassable gulf would be placed between the aristocracy of capital and
the freedom of labour; which would produce, as its natural results,
insolence, effeminacy, and corruption of manners, on the one side, and
perpetual poverty, hopeless poverty, abjectness of spirit, or sullen and
dangerous discontent, on the other. Even if, as Miss Martineau, in her
interesting stories, has asserted, it were true that the labourer would
be better clothed and fed than the small farmer, would the mere comfort
of food and clothes make up, to men living in a free and Christian
country, and within the daily reach of its influences, for the
destruction of that ascending path which hope alone can travel? There
would soon, on such a system, either in agriculture or manufactures, be
but two classes in the country,--the great capitalist and the slave. The
great capitalist would stand, like Aaron armed with his serpent rod, to
eat up all the lesser serpents that attempted to lift their heads above
that level which he had condemned them to. The mass would be doomed to a
perpetual despair of even advancing one step out of the thraldom of
labour and command, and their spirits would die within them, or live
only to snatch and destroy what they could not legitimately reach.
But such, happily, is not the case. Circumstances place a limit to such
things. The small farmer can and does exist, and has existed, and in
many cases, flourished too, in the face of all changes, and surrounded
by large farms cultivated with all the skill of modern art, and all the
power of capital. I have seen and known such, and happier and more
comfortable people do not exist. I do not mean by a small farm, what
Miss Martineau has called such,--some dozen acres--mere cottage
allotments--but farms of from fifty to a hundred acres. There must be
full employment for a pair of horses, or there is created by their keep
an undue charge for labour, which is a serious preventive of success.
But where there is that full employment, a small farmer may live and
prosper. The political economist generally reasons in straight lines. He
will not turn aside to calculate the force of incidental circumstances;
and yet, these incidental circumstances frequently alter a question
entirely. For instance, a small farm may lie near a large town, and
thereby furnish the tenant with a very lucrative trade in milk; and such
incidental circumstances, owing to a location favourable for market, and
other causes, frequently exist. Small farmers often pay attention to
sources of profit, nearly, if not altogether, overlooked by larger ones.
Who does not know what sums are made by cottagers and small occupiers,
of the produce of their gardens and orchards, by carefully looking after
it, and some one of the family bringing it to market, and standing with
it themselves; while the great farmer seldom looks very narrowly to the
growth or preservation of either, and therefore incurs both badness of
crop and waste; and if he sends it to market, he sends it to the
huckster at a wholesale price, to save the annoyance of standing with
it. Small concerns, having small establishments, and _no dignity to
support_, nor other cares to divert the attention, find in these
resources alone frequently an income itself nearly equal to their
expenditure.
To determine questions of this kind there requires a close examination
into all their bearings, and into the habits and feelings of those
concerned. The truth of the matter, as regards the most profitable size
of farms, and their general benefit to the public, seems to be, that
there should be some of various sizes, that various degrees of capital
and capacity of management may be accommodated; that there may be a
chance for those beginning who have little to begin with, and a chance
of the active and enterprising rising, as activity and enterprise
should. This seems the only system by which the healthful temperament of
a community can be kept up; and that just equilibrium of interests, and
that ascending scale of advantages maintained, by which not merely the
wealth, but the real happiness of a state is promoted.
CHAPTER III.
FARM-SERVANTS.
The clown, the child of nature, without guile,
Blessed with an infant’s ignorance of all
But his own simple pleasures; now and then
A wrestling match, a foot-race, or a fair.--_Cowper._
We have in a preceding chapter, taken a view of the English farmer. We
have seen him at market--in his fields, and in his house receiving his
friends to a holiday feast. If we were to go to the farm-house on any
other day, and at any season of the year, and survey the farmer and his
men in their daily and ordinary course of life, we should always see
something to interest us; and we should have to contemplate a mode of
existence forming a strong contrast to that of townsmen; and,
notwithstanding the innovation which the progress of modern habits has
made on life in the country, still presenting a picture of simplicity,
homeliness, and quiet, which no other life retains. Thousands, indeed,
looking into a farm-house, surveying its furniture, the apparatus and
supply of its table, the manners and the language of its inhabitants,
would wonder where, after all, was the vast change said to have taken
place in the habits of the agricultural population. O! rude and
antiquated enough in all conscience, are hundreds of our farm-houses and
their inmates, in many an obscure district of merry England yet. The
spots are not difficult to be found even now, where the old oak table,
with legs as thick and black as those of an elephant, is spread in the
homely house-place, for the farmer and his family--wife, children,
servants, male and female; and is heaped with the rude plenty of beans
and bacon, beef and cabbage, fried potatoes and bacon, huge puddings
with “dip” as it is called, that is, sauce of flour, butter, and water
boiled, sharpened with vinegar or verjuice, and sweetened with brown
sugar or more economical molasses--“dip,” so called, no doubt, because
all formerly dipped their morsel into it; a table where bread and
cheese, and beer, and good milk porridge and oatmeal porridge, or
stirabout, still resist the introduction of tea and coffee and such
trash, as the stout old husbandman terms it. Let no one say that modern
language and modern habits have driven away the ancient rusticity, while
such dialogues between the farmer and guest as the following may be
heard--and such may yet be heard in the Peak of Derbyshire, where this
really passed.
_Farmer at table to his guest._--Ite, mon, ite!
_Guest._--Au have iten, mon. Au’ve iten till Au’m weelly brussen.
_Farmer._--Then ite, and brust thee out mon: au wooden we hadden to
brussen thee wee.[2]
[2] This is the present genuine dialect of the Peak, and is nearly as
pure Saxon. It is curious to see in the southern agricultural
counties, how the old Saxon terms are worn out by a greater
intercourse with London and townspeople, although the people
themselves have a most Saxon look, with their fair complexions and
light brown hair; while, as you proceed northward, the Saxon becomes
more and more prevalent in the country dialects. In the midland
counties bracken is the common term for fern--in the south not a
peasant ever heard it. The dialects of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire,
and Staffordshire, are so similar to that of the Sassenach of
Scotland, the Lowland Scots, that the language of Burns was nearly as
familiar to me when I first read his poems, as that of my village
neighbours; and the Scotch read that clever romance of low life,
“Bilberry Thurland,” with a great relish, the dialogues of which are
genuine Nottinghamshire, because they said, it was such good Scotch. I
have noticed that the plays of the boys in Derbyshire and in the
Scotch Lowlands have similar names, differing from the English names
in general; as the English game of bandy, in Derbyshire is shinny, in
Scotland shinty.
It is no rare sight to see the farmer himself, with his clouted shoon
and his fustian coat, ribbed blue or black worsted stockings, and
breeches of corduroy; to see him arousing his household, at five o’clock
of a morning, and his wife hurrying the servant-wenches, as they call
them, from their beds, crying,--“Up, up, boulder-heads!” that is
pebble-heads, or heavy-heads, and asking them if they mean to lie till
the sun burns their eyes out; having them up to light fires, sweep the
hearth, and get to milking, cheese-making, churning, and what not;
while he gets his men and boys to their duties,--in winter, to fodder
the horses and cows, and prepare for ploughing, or carting out manure;
to supply the “young beast,”--young cattle, in the straw-yard with food;
to chop turnips, carrots, mangel-würzel, cut hay, boil potatoes for
feeding pigs or bullocks; thrash, winnow, or sack corn. In summer, to be
off to the harvest-field. The wife is ready to take a turn at the churn,
or to turn up her gown-sleeves to the shoulders, and kneeling down on a
straw cushion, to press the sweet curd to the bottom of the cheese-pan.
To boil the whey for making whey butter, to press the curd into the
cheese-vats; place the new cheese in the press; to salt and turn, and
look after those cheeses which are in the different stages of the
progress from perfect newness and white softness, to their investment
with the unctuous coating of a goodly age. He is ready to go with the
men into the farm; she is ready to see that the calves are properly fed,
and to bargain with the butcher for the fat ones; to feed her geese,
turkeys, guinea-fowls, and barn-door fowls; to see after the collection
of eggs; how the milk is going on in the dairy, the cream churning, and
moulding of butter for sale. In some counties, especially in the west of
England, numerous are those homely and most useful dames that you see
mounted on their horses with nothing but a flat pad, or a stuffed sack
under them, jogging to market to dispose of the products of their dairy
and poultry yard, as fresh, hale, and independent, as their grandmothers
were. As to the farmer himself, he can hold the plough as his father did
before him. He hates your newfangled notions; he despises your
fine-fingered chaps, that are brought up at boarding-schools till they
are fit for nothing but to ride on smart whisk-tailed nags to market,
and carry a bit of a sample-bag in their pockets; and had rather, ten
times, be off to the hunt or the race-course than to market at all; or
to be running after a dog and gun, breaking down fences and trampling
over turnip and potato crops, when they ought to be watching that other
idlers did not commit such depredations. He sits with his men, and works
with his men; and, while he does as much as the best of them--follows
the plough, the harrow, or the drill, empties the manure-cart on his
fallows, loads the hay or the corn-wagon,--he many a time says to
himself that the “master’s eye does still more than his hand.” The
celebrated Mr. Robinson of Cambridge, who was fond of farming, gives in
a letter to a friend, a most striking view of the perpetual recurrence
of the little occupations which present themselves to the practical
farmer, and however apparently trivial, are really important, and full
of pleasure to those whose hearts are in such pursuit.--“Rose at three
o’clock; crawled into the library, and met one who said,--‘work while ye
have the light; the night cometh, when no man can work: my father
worketh hitherto, and I work.’ Rang the great bell, and roused the girls
to milking, went up to the farm, roused the horsekeeper, fed the horses
while he was getting up; called the boy to suckle the calves and clean
out the cow-house; lighted the pipe, walked round the garden to see what
was wanted there; went up to the paddock to see if the weaning calves
were well; went down to the ferry to see if the boy had scooped and
cleaned the boat; returned to the farm, examined the shoulders, heels,
traces, chaff and corn of eight horses going to plough, mended the
acre-staff, cut some thongs, whip-corded the plough-boys’ whips, pumped
the troughs full, saw the hogs fed, examined the swill-tubs, and then
the cellar; ordered a quarter of malt, for the hogs want grains, and the
men want beer; filled the pipe again, returned to the river, and bought
a lighter of turf for dairy fires, and another of sedge for ovens;
hunted out the wheelbarrows, and set them a trundling; returned to the
farm, called the men to breakfast, and cut the boys’ bread and cheese,
and saw the wooden bottles filled; sent one plough to the three roods,
another to the three half-acres, and so on; shut the gates, and the
clock struck five; breakfasted; set two men to ditch the five roods, two
men to chop sods, and spread about the land, two more to throw up manure
in the yard, and three men and six women to weed wheat; set on the
carpenter to repair cow-cribs, and set them up till winter; the wheeler,
to mend the old carts, cart-ladders, rakes, etc., preparatory to
hay-time and harvest; walked to the six-acres, found hogs in the grass,
went back and set a man to hedge and thorn; sold the butcher a fat calf
and the suckler a lean one.--The clock strikes nine; walked into the
barley-field; barleys fine--picked off a few tiles and stones, and cut a
few thistles; the peas fine but foul; the charlock must be topped; the
tares doubtful, the fly seems to have taken them; prayed for rain, but
could not see a cloud; came round to the wheat-field, wheats rather
thin, but the finest colour in the world; sent four women on to the
shortest wheats; ordered one man to weed along the ridge of the long
wheats, and two women to keep rank and file with him in the furrows;
thistles many, blue-bottles no end; traversed all the wheat-field, came
to the fallow-field; the ditchers have run crooked, set them straight;
the flag sods cut too much, the rush sods too little, strength wasted,
shew the men how to three-corner them; laid out more work for the
ditchers, went to the ploughs, set the foot a little higher, cut a
wedge, set the coulter deeper, must go and get a new mould-board against
to-morrow; went to the other plough, gathered up some wood and tied over
the traces, mended a horse-tree, tied a thong to the plough-hammer, went
to see which lands wanted ploughing first, sat down under a bush,
wondered how any man could be so silly as to call me _reverend_; read
two verses in the Bible of the loving-kindness of the Lord in the midst
of his temple, hummed a tune of thankfulness, rose up, whistled, the
dogs wagged their tails, and away we went, dined, drunk some milk and
fell asleep, woke by the carpenter for some slats which the sawyers must
cut, etc. etc.”
So spends many a farmer of the old stamp his day, and at night he takes
his seat on the settle, under the old wide chimney--his wife has her
little work-table set near--the “wenches” darning their stockings, or
making up a cap for Sunday, and the men sitting on the other side of the
hearth, with their shoes off. He now enjoys of all things, to talk over
his labours and plans with the men,--they canvass the best method of
doing this and that--lay out the course of to-morrow--what land is to be
broke up, or laid down; where barley, wheat, oats, etc. shall be sown,
or if they be growing, when they shall be cut. In harvest-time,
lambing-time, in potato setting and gathering time, in fact, almost all
summer long, there is no sitting on the hearth--it is out of bed with
the sun, and after the long hard day--supper, and to bed again. It is
only in winter that there is any sitting by the fire, which is seldom
diversified further than by the coming in of a neighbouring farmer, or
the reading of the weekly news.
Such is the rustic, plodding life of many a farmer in England, and
there is no part of the population for which so little has been done,
and of which so little is thought, as of their farm-servants. Scarcely
any of these got any education before the establishment of Sunday
schools--how few of them do yet, compared with the working population of
towns? The girls help their mothers--the labourers’ wives--in their
cottages, as soon almost as they can waddle about. They are scarcely
more than infants themselves, when they are set to take care of other
infants. The little creatures go lugging about great fat babies that
really seem as heavy as themselves. You may see them on the commons, or
little open green spots in the lanes near their homes, congregating
together, two or three juvenile nurses, with their charges, carrying
them along, or letting them roll on the sward, while they try to catch a
few minutes of play with one another, or with that tribe of bairns at
their heels--too old to need nursing, and too young to begin nursing
others. As they get bigger they are found useful in the house--they mop
and brush, and feed the pig, and run to the town for things; and as soon
as they get to ten or twelve, out they go to nurse at the farm-houses; a
little older, they “go to service;” there they soon aspire to be
dairymaids, or housemaids, if their ambition does not prompt them to
seek places in the towns,--and so they go on scrubbing and scouring, and
lending a hand in the harvest-field, till they are married to some young
fellow, who takes a cottage and sets up day-labourer. This is their
life; and the men’s is just similar. As soon as they can run about, they
are set to watch a gate that stands at the end of the lane or the common
to stop cattle from straying, and there through long solitary days they
pick up a few halfpence by opening it for travellers. They are sent to
scare birds from corn just sown, or just ripening, where
They stroll, the lonely Crusoes of the fields--
as Bloomfield has beautifully described them from his own experience.
They help to glean, to gather potatoes, to pop beans into holes in
dibbling time, to pick hops, to gather up apples for the cider-mill, to
gather mushrooms and blackberries for market, to herd flocks of geese,
or young turkeys, or lambs at weaning time; they even help to drive
sheep to market, or to the wash at shearing time; they can go to the
town with a huge pair of clouted ancle-boots to be mended, as you may
see them trudging along over the moors, or along the footpath of the
fields, with the strings of the boots tied together, and slung over the
shoulder--one boot behind and the other before; and then they are very
useful to lift and carry about the farm-yard, to shred turnips, or
beet-root--to hold a sack open--to bring in wood for the fire, or to
rear turfs for drying on the moors, as the man cuts them with his paring
shovel, or to rear peat-bricks for drying. They are mighty useful
animals in their day and generation, and as they get bigger, they
successively learn to drive plough, and then to hold it; to drive the
team, and finally to do all the labours of a man. That is the growing up
of a farm-servant. All this time he is learning his business, but he is
learning nothing else,--he is growing up into a tall, long,
smock-frocked, straw-hatted, ancle-booted fellow, with a gait as
graceful as one of his own plough-bullocks. He has grown up, and gone to
service; and there he is, as simple, as ignorant, and as laborious a
creature as one of the wagon-horses that he drives. The mechanic sees
his weekly newspaper over his pipe and pot; but the clodhopper, the
chopstick, the hawbuck, the hind, the Johnny-raw, or by whatever name,
in whatever district, he may be called, is every where the same; he sees
no newspaper, and if he did, he could not read it; and if he hears his
master reading it, ten to one but he drops asleep over it. In fact, he
has no interest in it. He knows there is such a place as the next town,
for he goes there to statutes, and to the fair; and he has heard of
Lunnon, and the French, and Buonaparte, and of late years of America,
and he has some dreamy notion that he should like to go there if he
could raise the wind, and thought he could find the way--and that is all
that he knows of the globe and its concerns, beyond his own fields. The
mechanic has his library, and he reads, and finds that he has a mind,
and a hundred tastes and pleasures that he never dreamed of before; the
clodhopper has no library, and if he had, books in his present state
would be to him only so many things set on end upon shelves. He is as
much of an animal as air and exercise, strong living and sound sleeping,
can make him, and he is nothing more. Just see the daily course of his
life. Harvest-time is the jubilee of his year. It is a time of incessant
and hurrying occupation--but that is a benefit to him--it is an
excitement, and he wants exciting. It rouses him out of that beclouded
and unimaginative dreamy state in which he stalks along the solitary
fields, or wields the flail in the barn; digs the drain or the ditch, or
plashes the fence, from day to day and week to week. The energies that
he has, and they are chiefly physical, are all called forth. He is in a
bustle. The weather is fine and warm--his blood flows quicker. The gates
are thrown open--the hay rustles in the meadow, or the golden corn
stands in shock amid the stubble: the wagons are rattling along the
lanes and the fields. His neighbours are all called out to assist. The
labourers leave every thing else, and are all in the harvest-field. The
women leave their cottages, and are there too. Young, middle-aged, and
old,--all are there, to work or to glean. The comely maiden with her
rosy face, her beaming eyes, and fair figure, brings with her mirth and
joke. The stout village matrons have drawn footless stockings on their
arms to protect them from the sun and stubble--they have pinned up their
bed-gowns behind, or doffed themselves to the brown stays and
linsey-woolsey petticoat, and are amongst the best hands in the field.
Even the old are feebly pulling at a rake, or putting hay into wain-row,
or looking on, and telling what they have done in their time. The
beer-keg is in the field, and the horn often goes round. The lunch is
eaten under the tree, or amongst the sheaves. In the house at noon,
there is a great setting out of dinner; beans and bacon, huge puddings
and dumplings are plentiful,--it is a joyous and a stirring time. There
is no other season of the year in which the farm-servant enjoys himself
so much as in harvest; not even in his few other days of relaxation--on
his visit to the fair, to the statutes, to the ploughing match, or on
_Mothering_ Sunday, when all the “servant-lads” and “servant-wenches”
are, in some parts of the country, set at liberty for a day, to go and
see their mothers. See him at any other time, and what a plodding,
simple, monotonous life he leads! He rises at an early hour--we have
seen in this chapter at _what an hour_ the Rev. Mr. Robinson had his men
up;--if he be going to work in the farm-yard, he goes out and gets to it
till breakfast-time: but if he be going to plough, or to do work at a
distance, or to carry corn home that has been sold at market by his
master, or to fetch bones, rape-dust, or other manure from the town, or
coals from the pit, he is up, whether it be summer or winter, at an hour
at which townspeople are often not gone to bed. In early spring, and
autumn he gets up to plough at five and six o’clock in a morning. It is
pitch dark, and dismally cold. He strikes a light with his tinder, for
lucifers he never saw, and has only heard of, as a horrible invention
for setting ricks on fire. He slips on his ancle-boots without lacing
them, and out he goes to fodder his horses, and rub them down. That
done, he comes in again.
The “servant wench” has lit the fire and set out his breakfast for him
and his fellows; huge basins of milk porridge, and loaves as big as
beehives, and pretty much of the same shape, and as brown as the back of
their own hands. To this fare he betakes himself with a capacity that
only country air and hard labour can give. Having made havoc with as
much of these as would serve a round family of citizens to breakfast, he
then stretches out his hand to a capacious dish of cold fat bacon of
about six inches thick; nay, I once saw bacon on such a table actually
ten inches thick, and all one solid mass of fat. This is set on the top
of half a peck of cold boiled beans that were left the day before, and
however strange such viands might seem to a townsman at six o’clock, or
earlier, in a morning, they vanish as rapidly as if they did not follow
that mess of porridge, and those huge hunches of bread. Well, to a
certainty he has now done. Nay, don’t be in such haste--he has _not_
done; he has his eye on the great brown loaf again. He must have a snack
of bread and cheese; so he takes his knife out of his waistcoat pocket,
a gigantic clasp knife, assuredly made by the knowing Sheffielder to hew
down such loaves, and lie in such pockets, and fill such stomachs, and
for no other earthly purpose. See! he cuts a massy fragment of the rich
curly kissing-crust, that hangs like a fretted cornice from the upper
half of the loaf, and places it between the little finger and the thick
of his left hand; he cuts a corresponding piece of cheese, and places it
between the thumb and the two fore-fingers of the same hand, and
alternately cutting his bread and cheese with his clasp-knife (for he
would not use another for that purpose on any account), as Betty sets a
mug of ale before him, he wipes his mouth and says, as he lifts the mug,
to his younger companion, who has all this time been faithfully and
valiantly imitating him,--“Well, Jack, we must be off, lad; take a
draught, then get the horses out, and I’ll be with thee.”
This is pretty well for five or six o’clock in a morning; but it is
quite as likely that it is only one or two in the morning, as it
certainly is, if he be going to a distance with a load, or for a load of
any thing. The breakfast is as liberally handled, and Betty mean time
has put up their luncheons or “ten-o’clocks”--huge masses of bread and
cheese, or cold bacon, or cold meat, and a bottle of ale if they are
going to plough. Having now breakfasted, he has only to lace his boots,
which he generally does in the most inconvenient posture, and not before
he has filled himself till it is tenfold additionally inconvenient--so
with a face into which all the blood in his body seems to rush, and with
many a grunt, he accomplishes his task, and away he goes;--his whip
cracks, his gears jingle, his wagon rumbles, and he is gone. If,
however, he be going to plough, he will duly about eleven o’clock lunch
under a tree, while his horses rest and eat their hay; and then, at
three or four o’clock, he will loose them from the plough, and return
home to a dinner as plentiful as his breakfast; his horses are fed, and
he goes to bed. If he be going out with corn, or for coals, he is off,
as I have said, probably by two o’clock, and in his wagon he duly takes
with him a truss of hay and a truss of straw. The hay is for his horses
to eat at some wayside public-house, and the straw is for payment for
their standing in the stable. The straw is worth a shilling, and in some
places, at certain seasons, eighteen-pence. If he does not take straw,
he takes a shilling in money. He carries his luncheon and eats it in the
alehouse, and he has a shilling for himself and companion to drink, and
treat the hostler. This is a custom as old as farms and corn-mills
themselves. If it be winter weather, you shall meet him, probably, with
straw-bands wrapped round his legs, or even round his hat for warmth;
and in heavy rain his Macintosh is a sack-bag, which he throws over his
shoulders, and goes on defying the weather for a whole day. In sudden
squalls and thunder showers in summer, you may see him, and frequently a
whole cluster of harvesters, take shelter under his wagon till the storm
is over. By the evening fire, in some farm-houses, they mend their
shoes, or shape and polish the heads of flails which they have cut from
the black-thorn bush, and have had in a loft or under their bed
seasoning for the last six months, or they get into some horse-play, or
they doze
Till chilblains wake them, or the snapping fire.
And on Sundays they go to church in the morning to get a quiet nod.
Perhaps it is to them that the Apostle alludes when he says--“And your
young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” For
the only chance of their worship seems to be in their dreams--the daily
exposure to the air on the six days making them as drowsy as bats on the
seventh. In the afternoon they lean over gates, or play at quoits:--and
there is the life of a farmer man-servant, till he is metamorphosed into
a labourer by marrying and setting up his cottage, finding himself, and
receiving weekly instead of yearly wages. Such is the farm-servant,
whether you see him in his white, his blue, his tawny, or his
olive-green smock-frock, in his straw-hat, or his wide-awake, according
to the prevailing fashion of different parts of the country--and truly,
seeing him and his fellows, we may ask with Wordsworth--
What kindly warmth from touch of fostering hand,
What penetrating power of sun or breeze
Shall e’er dissolve the crust wherein his soul
Sleeps, like a caterpillar sheathed in ice?
This torpor is no pitiable work
Of modern ingenuity; no town
Or crowded city may be taxed with aught
Of sottish vice, or desperate breach of law,
To which in after years he may be roused.
This boy the fields produce:--his spade and hoe--
The carter’s whip that on his shoulder rests,
In air high-towering with a boorish pomp,
The sceptre of his sway: his country’s name,
Her equal rights, her churches and her schools--
What have they done for him? And, let me ask,
For tens of thousands, uninformed as he?[3]
[3] Who would believe it, that such is the profound ignorance amongst
the peasantry even of the Cumberland hills--amongst that peasantry
where Wordsworth himself has found his Michaels, his Matthews, and
many another man and woman that in his hands have become classical and
enduring specimens of rustic heart and mind, that such facts as the
following could occur, and yet this did occur there not very long ago.
The “statesmen,” that is, small proprietors there, are a people very
little susceptible of religious excitement; and, we may believe, have,
in past years, been very much neglected by their natural instructors.
You hear of no “revivals” amongst them, and the Methodists have little
success amongst them. Some person, speaking with the wife of one of
these “statesmen” on religious subjects, found that she had not even
heard of such a person as Jesus Christ! Astonished at the discovery,
he began to tell her of his history; of his coming to save the world,
and of his being put to death. Having listened to all this very
attentively, she inquired where this occured; and that being answered,
she asked, “and when was it?” this being also told her, she very
gravely observed--“Well, its sae far off, and sae lang since, we’ll
fain believe that it isna true!”
CHAPTER IV.
THE BONDAGE SYSTEM OF THE NORTH OF ENGLAND.
A person from the south or midland counties of England, journeying
northward, is struck when he enters Durham, or Northumberland, with the
sight of bands of women working in the fields under the surveillance of
one man. One or two such bands, of from half a dozen to a dozen women,
generally young, might be passed over; but when they recur again and
again, and you observe them wherever you go, they become a marked
feature of the agricultural system of the country, and you naturally
inquire how it is that such regular bands of female labourers prevail
there. The answer, in the provincial tongue, is--“O they are the
Boneditchers,” _i. e._ Bondagers. Bondagers! that is an odd sound, you
think, in England. What, have we bondage, a rural serfdom, still
existing in free and fair England? Even so. The thing is astounding
enough, but it is a fact. As I cast my eyes for the first time on these
female bands in the fields, working under their drivers, I was, before
making any inquiry respecting them, irresistibly reminded of the
slave-gangs of the West Indies: turnip-hoeing, somehow, associated
itself strangely in my brain with sugar-cane dressing; but when I heard
these women called Bondagers, the association became tenfold strong.
On all the large estates in these counties, and in the south of
Scotland, the bondage system prevails. No married labourer is permitted
to dwell on these estates unless he enters into bond to comply with this
system. These labourers are termed hinds. Small houses are built for
them on the farms, and on some of the estates--as those of the Duke of
Northumberland--all these cottages are numbered, and the number is
painted on the door. A hind, therefore, engaging to work on one of the
farms belonging to the estate, has a house assigned him. He has 4_l._ a
year in money; the keep of a cow; his fuel found him,--a prescribed
quantity of coal, wood, or peat, to each cottage; he is allowed to plant
a certain quantity of land with potatoes; and has thirteen boles of corn
furnished him for his family consumption; one-third being oats,
one-third barley, and one-third peas. In return for these advantages, he
is bound to give his labour the year round, and also to furnish a woman
labourer at 1_s._ per day during harvest, and 8_d._ per day for the rest
of the year. Now it appears, at once, that this is no hereditary
serfdom--such a thing could not exist in this country; but it is the
next thing to it, and no doubt has descended from it; being serfdom in
its mitigated form, in which alone modern notions and feelings would
tolerate it. It may even be said that it is a voluntary system; that it
is merely married hinds doing that which unmarried farm-servants do
everywhere else--hire themselves on certain conditions from year to
year. The great question is, whether these conditions are just, and
favourable to the social and moral improvement of the labouring class.
Whether, indeed, it be quite of so voluntary a nature as, at first
sight, appears; whether it be favourable to the onward movement of the
community in knowledge, virtue, and active and enterprising habits.
These are questions which concern the public; and these I shall
endeavour to answer in that candid and dispassionate spirit which public
good requires.
In the first place, then, it is only just to say that their cottages,
though they vary a good deal on different estates, are in themselves, in
some cases, not bad. Indeed, some of those which we entered on the
estates of the Duke of Northumberland, were much more comfortable than
labourers’ cottages often are. Each has its number painted on the door,
within a crescent,--the crest of the Northumberland family; and though
this has a look rather savouring too much of a badge of servitude, yet
within many of them are very comfortable. They are all built pretty much
on one principle, and that very different to the labourers’ houses of
the south. They are copied, in fact, from the Scotch cottages. They are
of one story, and generally of one room. On one side is the fireplace,
with an oven on one hand and a boiler on the other; on the opposite side
of the cottage is the great partition for the beds, which are two in
number, with sliding doors or curtains. The ceiling is formed by poles
nailed across from one side of the roof to the other, about half a yard
above where it begins to slope, and covered with matting. From the
matting to the wall the slope is covered with a piece of chintz in the
best cottages; in others, with some showy calico print, with ordinary
wall-paper, or even with paper daubed with various colours and patterns.
This is the regular style of the hind’s cottage; varying in neatness and
comfort, it must be confessed, however, from one another by many
degrees. Many are very naked, dirty, and squalid. Where they happen to
stand separate, on open heaths, and in glens of the hills, nature throws
around them so much of wild freedom and picturesqueness as makes them
very agreeable. The cottages of the shepherds are often very snug and
curious. We went into the cottage of the herd of Middleton, at the foot
of the Cheviots, an estate formerly belonging to Greenwich Hospital.
This hut was of more than ordinary size, as it was required to
accommodate several shepherds. The part of the house on your left as you
entered was divided into two rooms. The one was a sort of entrance
lobby, where stood the cheese-press and the pails, and where hung up
various shepherds’ plaids, great coats, and strong shoes. In one place
hung a mass of little caps with strings to them, ready to tie upon the
sheeps’ heads when they become galled by the fly in summer; in another
were suspended wool-shears and crooks. The other little room was the
dairy, with the oddest assemblage of wooden quaighs or little pails
imaginable. Over these rooms, a step-ladder led to an open attic in the
roof, which formed at once the sleeping apartment of the shepherds and a
store-room. Here were three or four beds, some of them woollen
mattresses on rude stump-bedsteads; others pieces of wicker-work, like
the lower half of a pot-crate cut off, about half a yard high, filled
with straw, and a few blankets laid upon it. There were lots of fleeces
of wool stowed away; and lasts and awls stuck into the spars, shewed
that the herds occasionally amused their leisure in winter and bad
weather by cobbling their shoes. The half of the house on your right
hand on entering, was at all points such as I have before described,
with its coved and matted ceiling, its chintz cornice, and its two beds
with sliding doors. But the majority of the cottages of the hinds about
the great farm-houses, are dismal abodes. They are generally built in a
low, and sometimes in a dreary quadrangle, without those additions of
gardens, piggeries, etc., which so much enrich and embellish the
cottages of the labourers in many parts of the kingdom. And what is the
state of feeling within? is it that of contentment or acquiescence? I am
bound to say that many inquiries made in various places, discovered one
general sentiment of discontent with the system. But in the first place,
let us take a view of the general aspect of the country under this
system as it appears to a stranger from the south, and here we have at
hand the graphic descriptions of Cobbett, from his tour in Scotland and
the northern counties of England, in 1832.
He does not seem to have become aware of the existence of the system
while in Durham and Northumberland. He perceived, what no man can pass
through those counties without seeing, the large-farm system in full
operation, and with all its consequences in its face. “From Morpeth to
within four miles of Hexham the land is very indifferent; the farms of
an enormous extent. I saw in one place more than a hundred corn-stacks
in one yard, each having from six to seven Surrey wagon-loads of sheaves
in one stack; and not another house to be seen within a mile or two of
the farm-house. There appears to be no such thing as barns, but merely a
place to take in a stack at a time, and thrash it out by a machine. The
country seems to be almost wholly destitute of people: immense tracts of
corn land, but neither cottages nor churches.” p. 56. This was the first
glimpse of the thing; it had not yet broken fully upon him; but he had
not gone much further before the vast solitude of the depopulative
system began to press upon his brain, and to set those indignant
feelings and theorizings at work in him, which belonged so peculiarly to
his nature. “From Morpeth to Alnwick, the country, generally speaking,
is very poor as to land, scarcely any trees at all; the farms enormously
extensive: only two churches, I think, in the whole of the twenty miles,
_i. e._ from Newcastle to Alnwick. Scarcely any thing worthy the name of
a tree, and not one single dwelling having the appearance of a
labourer’s house. Here appears to be neither hedging nor ditching; no
such thing as a sheep-fold or a hurdle to be seen; the cattle and sheep
very few in number; _the farm-servants living in the farm-houses, and
very few of them_; the thrashing done by machinery and horses; _a
country without people_. This is a pretty country to take a minister
from, to govern the south of England! a pretty country to take a Lord
Chancellor from, to prattle about _poor-laws_, and about _surplus
population_! My LORD GREY has, in fact, spent his life here, and
BROUGHAM has spent his life in the inns of court, or in the botheration
of speculative books. How should either of them know any thing about the
eastern, southern, or western counties? I wish I had my dignitary, DR.
BLACK, here; I would soon make him see that he has all these number of
years been talking about the bull’s horns instead of his tail and
buttocks. Besides the indescribable pleasure of having seen NEWCASTLE,
the SHIELDSES, SUNDERLAND, DURHAM, and HEXHAM, I have now discovered the
true ground of all the errors of the Scotch _feelosophers_, with regard
to population, and with regard to poor-laws. The two countries are as
different as any things of the same nature can possibly be; that which
applies to the one does not at all apply to the other. The agricultural
counties are covered all over with parish churches, and with people
thinly distributed here and there. Only look at the two counties of
Dorset and Durham. Dorset contains 1005 square miles; Durham contains
1061 square miles. Dorset has 271 _parishes_; Durham has 75 parishes.
The population of Dorset is scattered all over the whole county; there
being no town of any magnitude in it. The population of Durham, though
larger than that of Dorset, is almost all gathered together at the
mouths of the TYNE, the WEAR, and the TEES. Northumberland has 1871
square miles; and Suffolk has 1512 square miles. Northumberland has
_eighty-eight parishes_; and Suffolk has _five hundred and ten
parishes_. So here is a county one-third part smaller than that of
Northumberland, with _six times as many villages in it_! What comparison
is there to be made between states of society so essentially different?
What rule is there, with regard to population and poor-laws, which can
apply to both cases? * * * Blind and thoughtless must that man be, who
imagines that all but _farms_ in the south are unproductive. I much
question whether, taking a strip three miles each way from the road,
coming from NEWCASTLE to ALNWICK, an equal quantity of what is called
_waste ground_ in Surrey, together with the cottages that skirt it, do
not exceed such strip of ground in point of produce. Yes; the cows,
pigs, geese, poultry, gardens, bees, and fuel that arise from these
_wastes_, far exceed, even in the capacity of sustaining people, similar
breadths of ground, distributed into these large farms, in the poorer
parts of Northumberland. I have seen not less than ten thousand geese in
one tract of common, in about six miles, going from CHOBHAM towards
FARNHAM in Surrey. I believe these geese alone, raised entirely by care
and the common, to be worth more than the clear profit that can be drawn
from any similar breadth of land between MORPETH and ALNWICK.”
There are two important particulars connected with this statement: one
regards the sustenance of life, and the other morals. Much has been said
of the morals of the hinds of Northumberland under this system, and in
the main their morals may be good; but one or two facts I can state, as
it regards the morals of the common people in general in both counties.
In going over this very ground, of which Cobbett has been speaking, we
witnessed such a scene as we never witnessed in any other part of
England. We had taken our places in an afternoon coach, going from
Newcastle to Morpeth. It was market-day, and we had not proceeded far
out of Newcastle when we found that the coach in which we were, had
actually _two-and-thirty passengers_. They consisted of country-people
returning from market, who were taken up principally on the road. There
were _nine_ inside, and _twenty-three_ outside; _six of whom sat piled
on each other’s knees, on the driving-box_! The greater part of them
were drunk; and the number of tipsy fellows staggering along the road,
exceeded what we ever saw in any other quarter. We happened to be too at
Alnwick fair, and we never saw the farmers and drovers more freely
indulge in drink and noise. Moreover, from Alnwick to Belford we had a
wealthy farmer in the coach, who was raving drunk, shouted out of the
windows, chafed like a wild beast in a cage, and presented a spectacle
such as I have never seen in a coach elsewhere. So much for the morals
of that region.
But Cobbett had not yet seen the finest lands, or got a glimpse of the
Bondage System. He still goes on expressing his astonishment at the
solitude, the vast farms with their steam thrashing-machines; “so that
the elements seem to be pressed into the amiable service of sweeping the
people from the earth, in order that the whole amount may go into the
hands of a small number of persons, that they may squander it at London,
Paris, or Rome.” It was only after he had traversed the Lothians that
the full discovery broke upon him; so that, after all, he never seems to
have perceived that the Bondage System was prevalent in England, but
speaks of it as exclusively a Scotch system. There is every reason to
believe it a relic of ancient feudalism; but it is certain that but for
the doctrines of the Edinburgh Economists it would have long ago
vanished from our soil. When Cobbett arrived at Edinburgh, there he
seemed to take breath, and clear his lungs for a good tirade against the
system; which he does thus, in his first letter to the _Chopsticks_ of
the south. “This city is fifty-six miles from the Tweed, which separates
England from Scotland. I have come through the country in a post-chaise,
stopped one night upon the road, and have made every inquiry, in order
that I might be able to ascertain the exact state of the labourers on
the land. With the exception of about seven miles, the land is the
finest that I ever saw in my life, though I have seen every fine vale in
every county in England, and in the United States of America. I never
saw any land a tenth-part so good. You will know what the land is, when
I tell you that it is by no means uncommon for it to produce seven
English quarters of wheat upon one English acre; and forty tons of
turnips upon one English acre; and that there are, almost in every half
mile, from fifty to a hundred acres of turnips in one piece, sometimes
white turnips, and sometimes Swedes; all in rows, as straight as a line,
and without a weed to be seen in any of these beautiful fields.
“Oh! how you will wish to be here! ‘Lord,’ you will say to yourselves,
‘what pretty villages there must be; what nice churches and churchyards.
Oh! and what preciously nice alehouses! Come, Jack, let us set off to
Scotland! What nice gardens we shall have to our cottages there! What
beautiful flowers our wives will have, climbing up about the windows,
and on both sides of the paths leading from the wicket up to the door!
And what prancing and barking pigs we shall have running out upon the
common, and what a flock of geese grazing upon the green!’
“Stop! stop! I have not come to listen to you, but to make you listen to
me. Let me tell you, then, that there is neither village, nor church,
nor alehouse, nor garden, nor cottage, nor flowers, nor pig, nor goose,
nor common, nor green; but the thing is thus:--1. The farms of a whole
county are, generally speaking, the property of one lord. 2. They are so
large, that the corn-stacks frequently amount to more than a hundred
upon one farm, each stack having in it, on an average, from fifteen to
twenty English quarters of corn. 3. The farmer’s house is a house big
enough and fine enough for a gentleman to live in; the farm-yard is a
square, with buildings on the sides of it for horses, cattle, and
implements; the stack-yard is on one side of this, the stacks all in
rows, and the place as big as a little town. 4. On the side of the
farm-yard next to the stack-yard, there is a place to thrash the corn
in; and there is, close by this, always a thrashing-machine, sometimes
worked by horses, sometimes by water, sometimes by wind, and sometimes
by steam, there being no such thing as a barn or a flail in the whole
country.
“‘Well,’ say you, ‘but out of such a quantity of corn, and of beef, and
of mutton, there must some come to the share of the chopsticks, to be
sure!’ Don’t be too sure yet; but hold your tongue, and hear my story.
The single labourers are kept in this manner: about four of them are put
into a shed, quite away from the farm-house, and out of the farm-yard;
which shed, Dr. Jameson, in his Dictionary, calls a ‘boothie,’ a place,
says he, where labouring servants are lodged. A boothie means a little
booth; and here these men live and sleep, having a certain allowance of
oat, barley, and pea meal, upon which they live, mixing it with water,
or with milk when they are allowed the use of a cow, which they have to
milk themselves. They are allowed some little matter of money besides,
to buy clothes with, but never dream of being allowed to set foot within
the walls of the farm-house. They hire for the year, under very severe
punishment in case of misbehaviour, or quitting service; and cannot have
fresh service, without a _character_ from the _last master_, and also
from the _minister of the parish_!
“Pretty well that for a knife and fork chopstick of Sussex, who has
been used to sit round the fire with the master and mistress, and pull
about and tickle the laughing maids! Pretty well _that_! But it is the
life of the married labourer that will delight you. Upon a steam-engine
farm, there are perhaps eight or ten of these. There is, at a
considerable distance from the farm-yard, a sort of _barrack_ erected
for these to live in. It is a long shed, stone walls and pantile roof,
and divided into a certain number of _boothies_, each having a door and
one little window, all the doors being on one side of the shed, and
there being no _back-doors_; no such thing, for them, appears ever to be
thought of. The ground in front of the shed is wide or narrow according
to circumstances, but quite smooth; merely a place to walk upon. Each
distinct _boothie_ is about seventeen feet one way, and fifteen feet the
other way, as nearly as my eye could determine. There is no ceiling, and
no floor but the earth. In this place, a man and his wife and family
have to live. When they go into it there is nothing but the four bare
walls, and the tiles over their head, and a small fireplace. To make the
most of the room, they at their own cost erect _berths_, like those in a
barrack-room, which they get up into when they go to bed; and here they
are, a man, and his wife, and a parcel of children, squeezed up in this
miserable hole, with their meal and their washing tackle, and all their
other things; and yet it is quite surprising how decent the women
endeavour to keep the place. These women, for I found all the men out at
work, appeared to be most industrious creatures, to be extremely
obliging, and of good disposition; and the shame is, that they are
permitted to enjoy so small a portion of the fruit of all their labours,
of all their cares.
“But if their dwelling-places be bad, their food is worse, being fed
upon exactly that which we feed hogs and horses upon. The married man
receives in money about four pounds for the whole year: and he has
besides sixty bushels of oats, thirty bushels of barley, twelve bushels
of peas, and three bushels of potatoes, with ground allowed him to plant
the potatoes. The master gives him the keep of a cow the year round; but
he must find the cow himself; he pays for his own fuel; he must find a
woman to reap for twenty whole days in the harvest, as payment for the
rent of his boothie. He has no wheat,--the meal altogether amounts to
about six pounds for every day in the year; the oatmeal is eaten in
porridge; the barley-meal and pea-meal are mixed together, and baked
into a sort of cakes, upon an iron plate put over the fire; they
sometimes get a pig, and feed it upon the potatoes.
“Thus they never have one bit of wheaten bread, or of wheaten flour, nor
of beef, nor mutton, though the land is covered with wheat and with
cattle. The hiring is for a year, beginning on the 26th of May, and not
at Michaelmas. The farmer takes the man just at the season to get the
sweat out of him; and if he dies, he dies when the main work is done.
The labourer is wholly at the mercy of the master, who, if he will not
keep him beyond the year, can totally ruin him, by refusing him a
character. The cow is a thing more in name than in reality; she may be
about to calve when the 26th of May comes: the wife may be in such a
situation as to make removal perilous to her life. This family has _no
home_; and no home can any man be said to have, who can thus be
dislodged every year of his life at the will of his master. It
frequently happens, that the poor creatures are compelled to sell their
cow for next to nothing; and, indeed, the _necessity of character from
the last employer_, makes the man a real slave, worse off than the negro
by many degrees; for here there is neither law to ensure him relief, nor
motive in the master to attend to his health, or to preserve his life.
“Six days from daylight to dark these good, and laborious, and patient,
and kind people labour. On an average they have six English miles to go
to church. Here are therefore twelve miles to walk on Sunday; and the
consequence is, that they very seldom go. But, say you, what do they do
with all the wheat, and all the beef, and all the mutton? and what
becomes of all the money that they are sold for? Why, the cattle and
sheep walk into England upon their legs; the wheat is put into ships to
be sent to London or elsewhere; and as to the money, the farmer is
allowed to have a little of it, but almost the whole of it is sent to
the landlord, to be gambled, or otherwise squandered away at _London_,
at _Paris_, or at _Rome_. The rent of the land is enormous; four, five,
six, or seven pounds for an English acre. The farmer is not allowed to
get much; almost the whole goes into the pockets of the lords; the
labourers are their slaves, and the farmers their slave-drivers. The
farm-yards are, in fact, _factories_ for making corn and meat, carried
on principally by the means of horses and machinery. There are no
people; and these men seem to think that people are not necessary to a
state. I came over a tract of country a great deal bigger than the
county of Suffolk, with only three towns in it, and a couple of
villages, while the county of Suffolk has 29 market-towns and 491
villages. Yet our precious government seems to wish to reduce England to
the state of this part of Scotland; and you are abused and reproached,
and called ignorant, because you will not reside in a _boothie_, and
live upon the food which we give to horses and hogs.” pp. 102-7.
This is the description of one of the most accurate observers of all
that related to the working man that ever lived. Such is the comparison
which he draws between the condition of the hinds, and of the southern
chopsticks. Such is his opinion of the superior condition of the
southern peasantry, that he says he would not be the man who should
propose to one of them to adopt the condition of a hind, especially if
the fellow should have a bill-hook in his hand. Cobbett’s description is
as accurate as it is graphic. Let any one compare it with my own in the
early part of this paper, made from personal observation in the summer
of 1836. Such was the painful impression left upon Cobbett’s mind, that
he reverts to it again and again. He tells us of a visit made to a farm
near Dunfermline, and of the wretched abodes and food of the men he
found there; but the last extract contains the substance of the Bondage
System.
Let it be understood that the system to the Bondagers, so called, is no
hardship. They are principally girls from sixteen to twenty years of
age. Full of health and spirits, and glad enough to range over the farm
fields in a troop, with a stout young fellow, laughing and
gossiping,--the grievance is none of theirs; but the poor hind’s, who
has to maintain them. Just when his family becomes large, and he has
need of all his earnings to feed, and clothe, and educate his troop of
children, then he is compelled to hire and maintain a woman to eat up
his children’s food; and to take away in her wages that little pittance
of cash that is allowed him, as many a wife with tears in her eyes has
said, “to clothe the puir bairns and put them to school.” But the system
is not without its injurious effect on the Bondager herself. It has
been said that the Bondagers are of service in the hind’s cottage, but
the wives over the whole space where the bondage system prevails tell
you that the Bondagers are of little or no use in the house. They look
upon themselves as hired to work on the farm, and they neither are very
willing to work in the house, nor very capable. They get out-of-door
tastes and habits; they loathe the confinement of the house; they
dislike its duties. “They are fit only,” say the women, to “mind the
bairns a bit about the door.” And this is one of the evils of the
system. Instead of women brought up to manage a house, to care for
children, to make a fireside comfortable, and to manage the domestic
resources well, they come to housekeeping ignorant, unprepared, and in a
great measure disqualified for it. They can hoe turnips and potatoes to
a miracle, but know very little about the most approved methods of
cooking them. They can rake hay better than comb children’s hair; drive
a cart or a harrow with a better grace than rock a cradle, and help more
nimbly in the barn than in the ingle.
The two points of most importance are those of the hind’s being
compelled to have a character from the last master, and of being at his
mercy, to turn him not only out of employ, but out of house and home. I
think little of their having no wheaten flour. Many a hardy race of
peasants, and even farmers, both in Scotland and England, in mountain
districts, never see any thing in the shape of bread but oat-cake. In
Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumberland, and the Peak of Derbyshire, there are
thousands that would not thank you for wheaten bread. The girdle-cakes,
as they call them, which the wives of the hinds make, of mixed barley
and pea meal, I frequently ate of and enjoyed. They are about an inch
thick, and eight or ten inches in diameter, and taste perceptibly of the
pea. These, and milk, are a simple, but not a despicable food; but the
fact, that these poor people must bring a character from the last master
before they can be employed again, is one which may seem at first sight
a reasonable demand, but is in fact the binding link of a most subtle
and consummate slavery. I have seen the effect of this system in the
Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire collieries. There, amongst the master
colliers, a combination was entered into, and for aught I know still
exists, to regulate the price of coal, and the quantity each master
should relatively get. This rule, that no man should be employed except
he brought a character from his last master, was adopted; and what was
the consequence? That every man was the bounden slave of him in whose
employment he was; and that soon the price of coals was raised to three
times their actual value, and the labour of the men restricted to about
three half-days, or a day and a half, per week.
Let any one imagine a body of men bound by one common interest, holding
in their possession all the population of several counties, and
subjecting their men to this rule. Can there be a more positive
despotism? The hind is at the mercy of the caprice, the anger, or the
cupidity of the man in whose hand he is; and if he dismiss him, as I
said in the early part of this paper, where is he to go? As Cobbett
justly remarks, he has NO HOME; and nothing but utter and irretrievable
ruin is before him. Such a condition is unfit for any Englishman; such
power as that of the master no man ought to hold. A condition like this
must generate a slavish character. Can that noble independence of
feeling belong to a hind, which is the boast of the humblest Englishman,
while he holds employment, home, character, everything at the utter
mercy of another? I have now laid before the reader the combined
evidence of my own observation and that of a great observer of the
working classes, both in town and country, in the north and the south,
and I leave it to the judgment of any man whether such a system is good
or bad: but I cannot help picturing to myself what would be the
consequence of the spread of this system of large farm and bondage all
over England. Let us suppose, as we must in that case, almost all our
working population cooped up in large towns in shops and factories, and
all the country thrown into large farms to provide them with corn--what
an England would it then be! The poetry and the picturesque of rural
life would be annihilated; the delicious cottages and gardens, the open
common, and the shouting of children would vanish; the scores of sweet
old-fashioned hamlets, where an humble sociality and primitive
simplicity yet remain, would no more be found; all those charms and
amenities of country life, which have inspired poets and patriots with
strains and with deeds that have crowned England with half her glory,
would have perished; all that series of gradations of rank and
character, from the plough-boy and the milk-maid, the free labourer, the
yeoman, the small farmer, the substantial farmer, up to the gentleman,
would have gone too;
And a bold peasantry, its country’s pride,
would be replaced by a race of stupid and sequacious slaves, tilling the
solitary lands of vast landholders, who must become selfish and hardened
in their natures, from the want of all those claims upon their better
sympathies which the more varied state of society at present presents.
The question, therefore, does not merely involve the comforts of the
hind, but the welfare and character of the country at large; and I think
no man who desires England not merely to maintain its noble reputation,
but to advance in social wisdom and benevolence, can wish for the wider
spread, or even the continuance of the Bondage System. I think all must
unite with me in saying, let the very name perish from the plains of
England, where it sounds like a Siberian word.[4] Let labour be free;
and this TRUCK SYSTEM of the agriculturists be abolished, not by Act of
Parliament, but by public principle and sound policy. It is a system
which wrongs all parties. It wrongs the hind, for it robs his children
of comfort and knowledge; it wrongs the farmer, for what he saves in
labour he pays in rent, while he gains only the character of a
taskmaster; and it wrongs the landholder, for it puts his petty
pecuniary interest into the balance against his honour and integrity;
and causes him to be regarded as a tyrant, in hearts where he might be
honoured as a natural protector, and revered as a father.
[4] Since the publication of the former edition of this work, I
understand _the name has been changed_; that, in May 1839, it was
agreed to call the _Bondagers_ _Woman’s-workers_; a clumsy
appellation, and which does not at all do away with anything more in
the system _than its name_.
* * * * *
This account of the Bondage System in the first edition, excited, as was
to be expected, a strong feeling in the public mind, both in the north
and the south. In the south great surprise, for it was a system totally
unknown to nine-tenths of readers; in the north great indignation on the
part of the supporters of the system. I have received many conflicting
statements from the Bondage district,--some thanking me for having made
public so accurate a description of an objectionable system; others
vindicating the system, and applauding it. I need not here notice those
communications which accorded with my own personal observations and
inquiries; but as my object is simply truth, I am more desirous to give
a counter-statement, so that all readers may draw their own inferences.
The most able, and in itself most interesting, defence of the system, I
received from the lady of John Grey, Esq. of Dilstone House,
Northumberland. Mr. Grey is well known as an active magistrate, an
eminent agriculturist and promoter of the interests of the agricultural
class; and Mrs. Grey is evidently a lady of a vigorous intellect and a
noble nature. She is a native of Northumberland, proud of her county,
and thoroughly persuaded of the excellence of its agricultural system. I
regret that my space will not permit me to give more than a very summary
notice of her vindication, nor more than a mere reference to the
documents by Mr. Grey, Mr. Gilly of Norham, the author of the “Life of
Felix Neff,” and Mr. Blackden of Ford Castle, which, however, may be
found in Mr. Frederick Hill’s works on National Education, under the
head of “Northern District.”
Mrs. Grey denies that Cobbett, though a graphic writer, is an accurate
one. She denies that a character is required with a hind from his last
master, but merely a certificate called “The Lines,” stating that he is
free from his former service. She asserts that all hinds _have_ gardens;
and that Bondagers make good domestic servants, and wives. She reports
that Mr. Grey only remembers _two_ instances of his hinds receiving
parochial relief, and adds that she never saw _two_ instances of their
own hinds being intoxicated.
But her description of the cottages of hinds and their way of life, is
perfectly Arcadian. “In a glance at cottage life in Northumberland, such
as 20 years of intimate observation has shewn it to me, let me introduce
you into one of the ‘miserable holes’ where, according to Cobbett, this
‘slave population’ are ‘squeezed up.’ Observe, if you please, its
furniture. There are a couple of neatly painted or fir-wood
_press-beds_; a dresser and shelves, on which are ranged a goodly
display of well-hoarded delf, or of modern blue-and-white Staffordshire
ware. There is also a _press_ or cupboard, in which are kept the nicer
articles of food, and below which are drawers for the clothes of the
family. A clock, in a handsome oaken case, ticks, not behind the door,
but in some conspicuous situation; and, in many families, is added a
_mahogany_ half-chest of drawers for the female finery. I admit that
_the houses are generally too small, and the want of a back-door and a
commodious second apartment_, are great evils; but _this is the
landlord’s blame_; and my object is only to shew that the hind, though
esteemed by you ‘many degrees worse than a negro,’ has yet the means of
making these insufficient abodes look most respectable and comfortable.
The press-beds form a partition, behind which is a small space
containing in one part a bed for the Bondager, and in another, a little
dairy and pantry containing stores of meat, flour, etc. This space ought
to be larger, and to form a second respectable apartment, but, such as
it is, it is well filled with the necessaries of life, which is no small
matter to the inhabitant. We might censure, too, the matted ceiling,
were not the eye immediately attracted from it by the plentiful store of
bacon which hangs below it, together with hanging shelves containing a
supply of cheeses, pot-herbs, etc., and in other parts bunches of yarn
ready for making into stockings or blankets. Then, as to clothing, the
men on Sundays are both respectably and handsomely dressed, and the
women,--yes, these very ‘slaves’, the Bondagers, may be seen with their
light print or Merino gowns, their winter’s plaid, and their summer’s
_Thibet_, or spun silk shawls; their Tuscan or Dunstable bonnets; and
their open-work cotton stockings, or smart boots. A _tawdry_ figure is a
rare sight; the generality are comfortably and neatly attired, and their
dress good in quality.
“When the ‘slave-gangs’ are at work in the fields under their ‘driver’
in winter, they are certainly a motley and uncouth group; many of them
having on their fathers’ great coats, and others long woollen dresses,
reaching to their ankles, above their other clothes, to defend them from
the cold. But in summer, the jaunty air of their short white, or light
cotton jackets, an article of dress which has somewhat the appearance of
the waist of a lady’s riding-habit, with its open collar displaying a
gay handkerchief beneath, with their pink or blue gingham petticoats,
give them quite a picturesque appearance.
“I should like to shew you too, what a pleasant sight it is when you pay
a visit of enquiry on the occasion of a _birth_. You will find the
mother laid among her well-bleached sheets, and comfortable home-made
blankets, surmounted by a gaily-patched quilt; and though you may be no
admirer--as gentlemen seldom are--of new-born babies, yet, when the
little thing is brought out of its snug cradle for your inspection, you
cannot but cast an approving glance on its nicely-plaited cap, and the
warm flannels and neatly made frock (often ornamented with braiding),
which bespeak it the child of competence and comfort. The Bondager too
is there, rather _dressed_ for the occasion (though ‘said by the wives
to be of little or no use to them’), it being customary for her to stay
at home to look after the house and nurse the mother, till she is well
enough to resume her duties. Should it be a first-born, you are invited
to inspect the baby’s wardrobe, and there is little appearance of
wretchedness in the sufficient stock of neat little garments ‘laid up in
lavender’ for the little stranger. It is expected, too, that you should
drink the child’s health, and a bottle of wine or spirits is produced
from the cupboard, along with a noble cheese, and a loaf to match it,
which it would be thought very ‘mean’ not to have to offer on such
occasions.” Mrs. Grey luxuriates in descriptions of the “_white loaf_
which the women always have, and the dainty _white cake_ for tea,
kneaded with butter or cream, when a friend comes to visit them; of the
fat things with which their cows and their pigs overflow their dairy and
larder; of their general good fare; and of the many days when the
Bondager is not at field-work, but stays to spin, knit, wash and iron
for the household,-- always milking the cow, and frequently churning and
making cheese.” She adds that the hinds’ wives make great profit of
their butter, about 5_l._ a year; and that they have “great spinning
matches, and spin all the woollen articles that they use.”
Mr. Grey in “Two Letters on the State of the Agricultural Interests, and
the Condition of the Labouring Poor,” published by Ridgway, London,
1831, draws a similar picture, describing the hind’s cottage as “a scene
of comfort and contentment.”
Now these hinds must be very unreasonable fellows. Spite of all their
bounteous and Arcadian lot; spite of their cottages being “scenes of
comfort and contentment,” they certainly were, as described in the
preceding pages, found by us, in 1836, in a most _dis_contented state.
And since then they have turned out in great numbers, calling upon their
employers to abolish the system. In public meetings held at Wooller, and
elsewhere, they described their situation as wretched, and their average
weekly gains at about 5_s._ 6¾_d._ Mr. L. Hindmarsh, in a paper on the
Bondage System, read at Newcastle, in August, 1838, bears testimony to
the great dissatisfaction of the hinds. Mr. Grey, in his pamphlet
alluded to above, states, on the other hand, that the “conditions” of
the hind, as they are called, were in 1831, the year of its publication,
as follows; and that however the market-price may vary the quantities
are _invariably the same_, and _always of the very best quality_;
varying with the price of grain from £30 to £40 a year.
£. _s._ _d._
36 bushels of oats 6 12 0
24 ditto barley 5 12 0
12 ditto peas 3 0 0
3 ditto wheat 1 5 0
3 ditto rye 0 15 0
36 ditto potatoes, at 1_s._ 6_d._ 2 14 0
24 pounds of wool 1 0 0
A cow’s keep for the year 9 0 0
Cottage and garden 3 0 0
Coals, carrying from the pit 2 0 0
Cash 3 10 0
-----------
£ 38 8 0
-----------
This is also exclusive of what the other branches of the family earn;
the females receiving 10_d._ or 1_s._ a day generally, and 2_s._ or
2_s._ 6_d._ in harvest.
Besides the general discontent and turn-out just noticed, which Mrs.
Grey attributes to the waywardness of human nature, we must introduce
these facts. The morals of these districts have been highly extolled,
and both Mr. and Mrs. Grey strongly reiterate the eulogium. Mrs. Grey
does not recollect _two_ instances of intoxication amongst the hinds in
her life; we saw many one day, as already stated. In the Fourth Annual
Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, even while advocating “the hinding
system,” we find these singular paragraphs: “Whatever general merits may
or may not otherwise have distinguished Northumberland and Durham from
more pauperized districts, these counties must not lay claim to
superiority in reference to bastardy, for in no part of England was
bastardy more prevalent than in portions of this district, and in none
was the practice of relief to the mother more pertinaciously upheld. The
Newcastle parishes of All Saints’ and St. Andrews, together with the
parishes of Sunderland and Berwick, _are the only places we can call to
mind_ where a weekly allowance for every legitimate child was not a
matter of course.
“The difficulties of inducing children in competent circumstances to
contribute to the support of their aged parents (whose maintenance the
parish had hitherto taken off their hands), were quite as great, if not
relatively greater, considering the wages of labour, in the north as in
the south.”
So much for morals; now for the Arcadian cottages. The Newcastle Courant
of November 23d, 1838, stated that “Thomas Dodds, Esq., surgeon, read a
very valuable paper on ‘Improvement in Cottage Architecture, and the
domestic comfort of the peasantry of North Northumberland.’ Mr. Dodds’
long personal observation, arising from his medical practice,” it is
stated, “peculiarly qualified him for the discussion of this important
and interesting subject,” and Mr. Dodds very summarily and pithily
characterized these abodes as “a disgrace to Northumberland.” He
contrasted them with “the splendid edifices, commemorative columns, and
magnificent streets, which the people of Northumberland are raising.” He
said, “The _miserable tenements of numbers of this class_ are less
carefully constructed than the stables of their horses, formed, as they
are, _in a majority of cases, of only one apartment_, open to the roof,
with earthen floor, and four-paned windows that dim the light of day, a
part of which is often occupied by the cow; and where the decencies of
life cannot be observed, there being no separate apartments for the
females of the family, one of whom is often a stranger in the capacity
of a servant to work ‘the bondage.’” He represented them equally
detrimental to health as to comfort and morals; and gave many instances
from personal observation, especially a case at that moment of a family
of eight persons, near Alnwick, all lying ill of typhus fever in their
one room with the corpse of one of them laid out in the midst of them.
He added a ludicrous anecdote of a cow which, in the night, leaped, in
some sudden fear, from its fastening behind the bed of a hind at
Hawkhill, right through the bed, and alighted on the hearth, bringing
the bed at one crash upon the people in it, and severely injuring the
man’s wife. Mr. Dodds called the attention of his hearers to some
cottages of the Duke of Northumberland erected at Brislee, as models for
cottage architecture, and strongly urged that “the hinds should _be no
longer compelled to seek in sleep and oblivion the only solace of his
cheerless dwelling_,” but have “an ingle blinking bonnily,” where he
might “spend his hours of relaxation in innocent amusements, or in
reading books suited to his way of life.”
“A vote of thanks to Mr. Dodds for this address was moved by John
Lambert, Esq., and _carried by acclamation_.”
What then are we to infer from these very conflicting statements? Why,
that where the people are discontented, and the appeal to their wealthy
neighbours on their behalf is received with acclamation,--the evil must
be the actual condition, and the “cottage scenes of comfort and
contentment,” the exceptions. Mrs. Grey admits that she “has endeavoured
to present the _sunny side_ of the picture as the reverse of my gloomy
one.” I can well believe that she lives on the sunny side of humanity;
and that her enlightened husband, and the most liberal portion of the
agriculturists, so treat their hinds as to form the exception. It is
only another proof of the wisdom of Pope’s words that “whate’er is best
administered is best.” That, under a pure despotism, people may be
perfectly happy if they happen to have a kind tyrant. That the hinds
under the bondage system may be, moral, flourishing, and happy, when
they have kind and sympathizing employers but that does not prove that
the system itself has a tendency to such happy results, nor consequently
remove our objections to it. _Any_ condition of the people is good where
Christian benevolence and enlightened regard are exercised towards them,
and any system, even the bondage system, is better than that deadly
neglect of the peasantry by the landowners, which too much prevails in
many parts of the south.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V.
THE TERRORS OF A SOLITARY HOUSE.
The citizen who lives in a compact house in the centre of a great city;
whose doors and windows are secured at night by bars, bolts, shutters,
locks, and hinges of the most approved and patented construction; who,
if he look out of doors, looks upon splendid rows of lamps; upon human
habitations all about him; whose house can only be assailed behind by
climbing over the tops of other houses; or before, by eluding troops of
passengers and watchmen, whom the smallest alarm would hurry to the
spot: I say, if such a man could be suddenly set down in one of our many
thousand country houses, what a feeling of unprotected solitude would
fall upon him. To sit by the fire of many a farm-house, or cottage, and
hear the unopposed wind come sighing and howling about it; to hear the
trees swaying and rustling in the gale, infusing a most forlorn sense of
the absence of all neighbouring abodes; to look on the simple casements
and the old-fashioned locks and bolts, and to think what would their
resistance be to the determined attack of bold thieves;--I imagine it
would give many such worthy citizen a new and not very enviable feeling.
But if he were to step out before the door of such a house at nine or
ten o’clock of a winter or autumnal night, what a state of naked
jeopardy it would seem to stand in! Perhaps all solitary
darkness;--nothing to be heard but the sound of neighbouring woods; or
the roar of distant waters; or the baying of the ban-dogs at the
scattered and far-off farm-houses; the wind puffing upon him with a wild
freshness, as from the face of vast and solitary moors; or perhaps some
gleam of moonlight, or the wild, lurid light which hovers in the horizon
of a winter-night sky, revealing to him desolate wastes, or gloomy
surrounding woods. In truth, there is many a sweet spot that, in summer
weather, and by fair daylight, do seem very paradises; of which we
exclaim, in passing, “Ay! there could I live and die, and never desire
to leave it!” There are thousands of such sweet places, which, when
night drops down, assume strange horrors, and make us wish for towers
and towns, watchmen, walkers of streets, and gaslight. One seems to have
no security in any thing. A single house five or six miles from a
neighbour. Mercy! why it is the very place for a murder! What would it
avail there to cry help! murder! Murder might be perpetrated a dozen
times before help could come!
Just one such fancy as that, and what a prison! a trap! does such a
place become to a fearful heart. We look on the walls, and think them
slight as card-board; on the roof, and it becomes in our eyes no better
than a layer of rushes. If we were attacked here, it were all over! This
gimcrack tenement would be crushed in before the brawny hand of a thief.
And to think of out-of-doors! Yes! of that pleasant out-of-doors, which
in the day we glorified ourselves in. Those forest tracts of heath, and
gorse, and flowering broom, where the trout hid themselves beneath the
overhanging banks of the most transparent streams--ugh! they are now the
very lurking-places of danger! What admirable concealment for
liers-in-wait, are the deep beds of heather. How black do those bushes
of broom and gorse look to a suspicious fancy! They are just the very
things for lurking assassins to crouch behind. And what is worse, those
woods! those woods that come straggling up to the very doors; putting
forward a single tree here and there, as advanced guards of picturesque
beauty in the glowing summer noon, or in the spring, when their leaves
are all delicately new. Beauty! how could we ever think them beautiful,
though we saw them stand in their assembled majesty; though they did
tower aloft with their rugged, gashed, and deeply-indented stems, and
make a sound as of many waters in their tops, and cast down pleasant
shadows on the mossy turf beneath; and though the thrush and the
nightingale did sing triumphantly in their thickets. Beautiful! they are
horrible! Their blackness of darkness now makes us shudder. Their breezy
roar is fearful beyond description. Let daylight and summer sunshine
come, and make them look as pleasant as they will, we would not have a
wood henceforward within a mile of us. Why, up to the walls of your
house, under your very windows, may evil eyes now be glaring from behind
those sturdy boles;--they seem to have grown there just to suit the
purposes of robbery and murder. We look now to the dogs and guns for
assistance, but they give us but cold comfort: for the guns only remind
us that at this moment the muzzle of one may be at that chink in the
shutter, at that hole out of which a knot has dropped, and in another
moment we are in eternity! And the dogs!--see, they rise! they set up
the bristles on their backs! they growl! they bark! our fears are true!
the place is beset!
This may seem rather exaggerated, read by good daylight, or by the fire
of a city hearth; but this is the natural spirit of the solitary house.
It is that which many a one has felt. It has cured many a one of longing
to live in a “sweet sequestered cot;” nay, it is the spirit felt by the
naturalized inhabitants of such solitary places. I look upon such places
to generate fears and superstitions too, in no ordinary degree. The
inhabitants of solitary houses are often most arrant cowards; and for
this there are many causes. A sense of exposure to danger if it be not
lost by time, is more likely to generate timidity of disposition than
courage. Then, the sound of woods and waters; the mysterious sighings
and moanings, and lumberings, that winds and other causes occasion
amongst the old walls and decayed roofs, and ill-fastened doors and
casements of large old country houses, have a wonderful influence on the
minds of the ignorant and simple, who pass their lives in the solitude
of fields; and go to and fro between their homes and the scene of their
duties, often through deep and lonesome dells, through deep,
o’ershadowed lanes by night; by the cross-road, and over the dreary
moor: all places of no good character. Superstitious legends hang all
about such neighbourhoods; and traditions enough to freeze the blood of
the ignorant, taint a dozen spots round every such place. In this field
a girl was killed by her jealous, or only too favoured lover: to the
boughs of that old oak, a man was found hanging: in that deep dark pool
the poor blind fiddler was found drowned: in that old stone-quarry, and
under that high cliff, deeds were done that have mingled a blackness
with their name. Nay, in one such locality, the head of a woodman was
found by some mowers returning in the evening from their work. There it
lay in the green path of a narrow dingle, horrid and blackening in the
sun. It was supposed to have been severed from the wretched man’s body
with his own axe, by a band of poachers, who charged him with being a
spy upon them. The body was found cast into a neighbouring marsh.
What lonely country but has these petrifying horrors? And is it
wonderful that they have their effect on the simple peasantry?
especially as they are the constant topics round the evening fire, along
with a thousand haunted-house and churchyard stories; ghosts, and
highway robberies, and
Horrid stabs in groves forlorn,
And murders done in caves.--_Hood._
The very means of defence sometimes become the aggravators of their
evils. The dogs and guns have added to the catalogue of their tales of
horror. The dogs, as conscious of their solitary station as their
masters, and with true canine instinct, feeling a great charge and
responsibility upon them, set up the most clamourous barkings at the
least noise in the night, and often seem to take a melancholy pleasure,
a whole night through, in uttering such awful and long-spun howls as are
seldom heard in more secure and cheerful situations. These are often
looked upon as prognostics of family troubles, and occasion great fears.
Who has not heard these dismal howlings at old halls, and been witness
to the anxiety they occasioned? And, if a branch blown by the wind do
but scrape against a pane, or an unlucky pig get into the garden, the
dogs are all barking outrageously, and the family is up, in the certain
belief that they are beset with thieves; and it has been no unfrequent
circumstance, on retiring to rest again, that loaded pistols have been
left about on tables, and the servants on coming down next morning, with
that fatal propensity to sport with fire-arms, have playfully menaced,
and actually shot one another in their rashness. Such a catastrophe
occurred in the family of a relative of mine, on just such an occasion.
But truly, the horrors and depredations which formerly were perpetrated
in such places, were enough to make a solitary house a terrible sojourn
in the night. A single cottage on a great heath; a toll-bar on a wild
road, far from a town; a wealthy farm-house in a retired region; an old
hall or grange, amongst gloomy woods. These were places in which such
outrages were committed in former years as filled the newspapers of the
time with continual details of terror; and would furnish volumes of the
most dreadful stories. It is said that the diminution of highway
robberies and stopping of mails, once so frequent, has been in a great
measure occasioned by the system of banking and paper-money. Instead of
travellers, carrying with them large bags of gold, a letter by post
transmits a bill to any amount, which, if intercepted is of no use to
the thief, because the fact is immediately notified to the bank, and
payment prevented; and notes being numbered, makes it a matter of the
highest risk to offer them, lest the public be apprized of the numbers,
and the offender be secured. But the wonderful improvement of all our
roads since the days of M‘Adam, the consequently increased speed of
travelling--the increased population and cultivation of the country, all
have combined to spoil the trade of the public plunderer. And the press,
as in other respects so in this, has added a marvellous influence.
Scarcely has a crime of any sort against society been committed, but it
raises a hue and cry; handbills and paragraphs in newspapers are flying
far and wide, and dexterous must be the offender who escapes. The house
of a friend of mine was entered on a Sunday night, and by means of
handbills four of the thieves were secured on the Monday, and tried and
transported on the Tuesday. But fifty years ago this could not have been
done in a country place. The traveller had to wade through mud and deep
ruts, along our well-frequented roads; and if assailed it was impossible
to fly. Desperate bands of thieves made nocturnal assaults upon solitary
houses; and, long ere a hue and cry could be raised, they had vanished
into woods and heaths, or had fled beyond the slow flight of lumbering
mails, and newspapers that did not reach their readers sometimes for a
fortnight. Those were the times for fearful tragedies in lonely
dwellings, which even yet furnish thrilling themes for winter firesides.
There is an account of the attack of the house of Colonel Purcell, which
appeared in the newspapers at the time, and was twice reprinted in the
Kaleidoscope, a Liverpool literary paper; the last time soon after the
gallant Colonel’s death, in 1822, which, although it belongs to Ireland,
a country whence not volumes, but whole libraries of such recitals might
be imported, I shall insert here, because it so well illustrates the
sort of horrors to which lonely houses were, in this country, formerly
very much exposed; and from which they are not now entirely exempt; and
because perhaps no greater instance of manly courage is upon record. A
similar one, of female intrepidity, in a young woman who defended a
toll-bar, in which she was alone, against a band of thieves, and shot
several of them, I recollect seeing some years ago in the newspapers.
EXTRAORDINARY INTREPIDITY OF SIR JOHN PURCELL.
At the Cork Assizes, Maurice Noonan stood indicted for a burglary, and
attempting to rob the house of Sir John Purcell, at Highfort, on the
night of the 11th of March, 1812.
Sir John Purcell said, that, on the night of the 11th of March last,
after he had retired to bed, he heard some noise outside the window of
his parlour. He slept on the ground-floor, in a room immediately
adjoining the parlour. There was a door from one room into the other;
but this having been found inconvenient, and there being another passage
from the bed-chamber more accommodating, it was nailed up, and some of
the furniture of the parlour placed against it. Shortly after Sir John
heard the noise in the front of his house, the windows of the parlour
were dashed in, and the noise, occasioned by the feet of the robbers in
leaping from the windows down upon the floor, appeared to denote a gang
not less than fourteen in number, as it struck him. He immediately got
out of bed; and the first resolution he took being to make resistance,
it was with no small mortification that he reflected upon the unarmed
condition in which he was placed, being destitute of a single weapon of
the ordinary sort. In this state he spent little time in deliberation,
as it almost immediately occurred to him, that, having supped in the
bed-chamber on that night, a knife had been left behind by accident, and
he instantly proceeded to grope in the dark for this weapon, which
happily he found, before the door leading from the parlour into the
bed-chamber had been broken. While he stood in calm but resolute
expectation that the progress of the robbers would soon lead them to the
bed-chamber, he heard the furniture which had been placed against the
nailed-up door, expeditiously displaced, and immediately afterwards the
door was burst open. The moon shone with great brightness, and when the
door was thrown open, the light streaming in through three large windows
in the parlour, afforded Sir John a view that might have made an
intrepid spirit not a little apprehensive. His bed-room was darkened to
excess, in consequence of the shutters of the windows, as well as the
curtains being closed; and thus while he stood enveloped in darkness, he
saw standing before him, by the brightness of the moonlight, a body of
men well armed; and of those who were in the van of the gang, he
observed that a few were blackened. Armed only with this case-knife, and
aided only by a dauntless heart, he took his station by the side of the
door, and in a moment after one of the villains entered from the parlour
into the dark room. Instantly upon advancing, Sir John plunged the knife
at him, the point of which entered under the right arm, and in a line
with the nipple, and so home was the blow sent, that the knife passed
into the robber’s body, until Sir John’s hand stopped its further
progress. Upon receiving this thrust, the villain reeled back into the
parlour, crying out blasphemously that he was killed; and shortly after
another advanced, who was received in a similar manner, and who also
staggered back into the parlour, crying out that he was wounded. A
voice from the outside gave orders to fire into the dark room. Upon
which, a man stepped forward with a short gun in his hand, which had the
butt broke off at the small, and which had a piece of cord tied round
the barrel and stock near the swell. As this fellow stood in the act to
fire, Sir John had the amazing coolness to look at his intended
murderer, and without betraying any audible emotion whatever, which
might point out the exact spot which he was standing in, he calmly
calculated his own safety from the shot which was preparing for him. He
saw that the contents of the piece were likely to pass close to his
breast without menacing him with, at least, any serious wound, and in
this state of pain and manly expectation, he stood without flinching
until the piece was fired, and its contents harmlessly lodged in the
wall. It was loaded with a brace of bullets and three slugs. As soon as
the robber fired, Sir John made a pass at him with the knife, and
wounded him in the arm, which he repeated again in a moment with similar
effect; and as the others had done, the villain after being wounded,
retired, exclaiming that he was wounded. The robbers immediately rushed
forward from the parlour into the dark room, and then it was that Sir
John’s mind recognised the deepest sense of danger, not to be oppressed
by it, however, but to surmount it. He thought that all chance of
preserving his own life was over; and he resolved to sell that life
still dearer to his intended murderers, than even what they had already
paid for the attempt to deprive him of it. He did not lose a moment
after the villains had entered the room, to act with the determination
he had so instantaneously adopted. He struck at the fourth fellow with
his knife, and wounded him, and at the same instant he received a blow
on the head, and found himself grappled with. He shortened his hold of
the knife, and stabbed repeatedly at the fellow with whom he found
himself engaged. The floor being slippery with the blood of the wounded
men, Sir John and his adversary both fell, and while they were on the
ground, Sir John thinking that his thrusts with his knife, though made
with all his force, did not seem to produce the decisive effect, which
they had in the beginning of the conflict, he examined the point of his
weapon with his finger, and found that the blade of it had been bent
near the point. As he lay struggling on the ground, he endeavoured, but
unsuccessfully, to straighten the curvature of the knife; but while one
hand was employed in this attempt, he perceived that the grasp of his
adversary was losing its constraint and pressure, and in a moment or two
after, he found himself released from it; the limbs of the robber were,
in fact, by this time, unnerved by death. Sir John found that this
fellow had a sword in his hand, and this he immediately seized, and gave
several blows with it, his knife being no longer serviceable. At length
the robbers, finding so many of their party had been killed or wounded,
employed themselves in removing the bodies; and Sir John took this
opportunity of retiring to a place a little apart from the house, where
he remained a short time. They dragged their companions into the
parlour, and having placed chairs with the backs upwards, by means of
these they lifted the bodies out of the windows, and afterwards took
them away. When the robbers retired, Sir John returned to the house, and
called up a man-servant from his bed, who, during this long and bloody
conflict, had not appeared, and had consequently received from his
master warm and loud upbraiding for his cowardice. Sir John then placed
his daughter-in-law, and grandchild, who were his only inmates, in
places of safety, and took such precautions as circumstances pointed
out, till the daylight appeared. The next day, the alarm having been
given, search was made after the robbers, and Sir John, having gone to
the house of the prisoner Noonan, upon searching, he found concealed
under his bed, the identical short gun with which one of the robbers had
fired at him. Noonan was immediately secured and sent to gaol, and upon
being visited by Sir John Purcell, he acknowledged that Sir John “had
like to do for him,” and was proceeding to show, until Sir John
prevented him, the wounds he had received from the knife in his arm.
An accomplice of the name of John Daniel Sullivan was produced, who
deposed to the same effect. The party met at Noonan’s house; that they
were nine in number, and had arms; that the prisoner was one of the
number, and that he carried a small gun. Upon the gun, which was in the
court, being produced, with which Sir John had been fired at, the
witness said it was that with which the prisoner was armed the night of
the attack; that two men were killed, and three dreadfully wounded. The
witness stood a long and rigorous examination by Mr. Counsellor
O’Connell; but none of the facts seemed to be shaken, though every use
was made of the guilty character of the witness. The prisoner made no
defence, and Judge Mayne then proceeded to charge the jury, and
commended with approbation the bravery and presence of mind displayed
throughout a conflict so very unequal and bloody, by Sir John Purcell.
The jury, after a few minutes, returned their verdict--guilty.
But it was not only plunder which excited these fearful attacks; party
and family feuds were prosecuted in the same savage spirit, even by the
light of day. I have heard my wife’s mother relate the following
incident, which occurred in her own neighbourhood. About sixty-five
years ago there lived at Llanelwth Hall, midway between Llandilo and
Llandovery, a gentleman of considerable fortune of the name of Powell.
He had separated from his wife, by whom he had two daughters,--and her
brother, Captain Bowen, inflamed by the animosity which naturally arises
out of such family divisions, and supposed to be instigated by a
paramour of the lady’s of the name of Williams, engaged, in concert with
this Williams, a band of men to accompany him on a pretended smuggling
expedition; and having plied them well with promises of ample payment
and plenty of liquor--a bottle of brandy and a pair of new shoes for the
day--marched up to Powell’s house at twelve o’clock at noon, and at the
time of Llandilo fair, when the conspirators knew that Powell’s servants
would be absent. The only persons actually left in the house with him,
were an old woman, and a daughter of this very Bowen’s. The conspirators
advanced to the front door, and entered the hall, where the old woman
met them. Her they seized, and bound to the leg of an old massy oak
table. Powell, attracted to the hall by the noise, was immediately
seized and literally hewn to pieces in the most horrible manner in the
presence of the old woman, and of the murderer’s own daughter, who
alarmed at the entrance of so grim a band, had concealed herself under
this table. The girl from that hour lost her senses, and wandered about
the country, a confirmed maniac. My informant often saw this girl at her
mother’s, who was kind to her, and where she often therefore came,
having a particular seat by the fire always left for her. In a lucid
interval, they once ventured to ask her what she recollected of this
shocking event. She said that she believed she had fainted, and on
coming to herself, saw her father stand with a hatchet over her uncle in
the act to give him another blow, and that she actually saw her uncle’s
face hanging over his shoulder. At this point of the recital, the
recollection of the horrors of it came upon her so strongly, that she
fell into one of her most violent fits of madness, and they never dared
to mention the subject afterwards in her presence.
A fall of snow happening while the murderers were in the house, caused
them to be tracked and secured, and Bowen and several, if not all, of
his accomplices were executed. Williams made his escape, and was
afterwards taken as a sailor on board an American vessel during the war,
where he was recognised by some of his countrymen. He made, however, a
second escape, as is supposed through the connivance of some relenting
neighbour, and never was heard of afterwards. My informant well
recollects two of these murderers coming to her mother’s house at
Cyfarthfa, a few days after the perpetration of the outrage, having so
long managed to elude their pursuers. They were equipped as travelling
tinkers; but they had new knapsacks, and what was more provocative of
notice at that moment, very downcast and melancholy aspects. They felt
by the looks which the mistress of the house fixed on them, that they
were suspected, and immediately hastened away over the hills towards
Aberdare, where they were secured the next day.
A fact related by a minister of the Society of Friends, shews at once
the primitive simplicity which still prevails in some retired districts,
and the evident power of faith in Providence over the spirit of evil. In
one of the thinly-peopled dales of that very beautiful, and yet by
parts, very bleak and dreary region--the Peak of Derbyshire, stood a
single house far from neighbours. It was inhabited by a farmer and his
family, who lived in such a state of isolation, so unmolested by
intruders, and unapprehensive of danger, that they were hardly in the
habit of fastening their door at night. The farmer who had a great
distance to go to market, was sometimes late before he got back,--late
it may be supposed according to their habits; for in such old-fashioned
places, where there is nothing to excite and keep alive the attention
but their daily labour, the good people when the day’s duties are at an
end, drop into bed almost before the sun himself; and are all up, and
pursuing their several occupations, almost before the sun too. On these
occasions, the good woman used to retire to rest at the usual time, and
her husband returning found no latch nor bolt to obstruct his entrance.
But one time the wife hearing some one come up to the door, and enter
the house, supposed it was her husband; but, after the usual time had
elapsed, and he did not come to bed, she got up and went down stairs,
when her terror and astonishment may be imagined, for she saw a great
sturdy fellow in the act of reconnoitring for plunder. At the first view
of him, she afterwards said, she felt ready to drop; but being naturally
courageous, and of a deeply religious disposition, she immediately
recovered sufficient self-possession to avoid any outcry, and to walk
with apparent firmness to a chair which stood on one side of the
fireplace. The marauder immediately seated himself in another chair
which stood opposite, and fixed his eyes upon her with a most savage
expression. Her courage was now almost spent; but recollecting herself,
she put up an inward prayer to the Almighty for protection, and threw
herself upon his providence. She immediately felt her internal strength
revive, and looked steadfastly at the man, who now had drawn from his
pocket a large clasp-knife, opened it, and with a murderous expression
in his eyes, appeared ready to spring upon her. She however evinced no
visible emotion; she said not a word; but continued to pray for
deliverance, or resignation; and to look on the fearful man with a calm
seriousness. He rose up, looked at her, then at the knife; then wiped it
across his hand; then again eagerly glanced at her; when, at once, a
sudden damp seemed to fall upon him; his eyes seemed to blench before
her still fixed gaze; he closed his knife, and went out. At a single
spring she reached the door; shot the bolt with a convulsive rapidity,
and fell senseless on the floor. When she recovered from her swoon, she
was filled with the utmost anxiety on account of her husband, lest the
villain should meet him by the way. But presently, she heard his
well-known step; his well-known voice on finding the door fastened; and
let him in with a heart trembling with mingled agitation and
thankfulness. Great as had been her faith on this occasion, and great
the interposition of Providence, we may be sure that she would not risk
the exercise of the one, or tempt the other, by neglecting in future to
shoot the bolt of the door; and her husband, at once taught the danger
of his house and of his own passage home, made it a rule to leave the
market-town at least an hour earlier after the winter markets.
The unwelcome visitant in this anecdote is one of that class of
offenders called “sturdy rogues.” Of the real “sturdy rogue” the city,
amongst all its numerous varieties of rogues, knows nothing. He forms
one of the terrors of the solitary house. They are such places that he
haunts, because he there finds opportunities in the absence of the men
to frighten and bully the women. If he find only a single woman left, as
is often the case in harvest time, or at fair or market time, when all
the family that can leave have left, he then makes the terror of his
presence a means of extorting large booty. What can be more fearful than
for a single individual, but especially for a woman, at a lonely house,
while all the men are absent in the fields, or elsewhere, to see a huge
brawny fellow of ill looks come to the door, peering about with a
suspicious inquisitiveness, armed with a sturdy staff, followed,
perhaps, by a strong sullen bull-dog, professing himself a tinker, a
rag-gatherer, a rat-catcher--anything, under which to hide evil designs?
Nothing, truly, can be more appalling, except when under the garb of a
woman, you feel assured that you have a man before you; or a troop of
fellows acting the distressed tradesmen, or sailors with nothing on
their bodies, perhaps, but a pair of trousers, and on their heads a
handkerchief tied. When such sturdy vagabonds come, and first cringe and
beg in a piteous tone, till, having spied out the real nakedness of the
place, as to physical strength, they rise in their demands, hint strange
things; instead of going away when desired, walk into the house, grow
insolent, and at length downright thievish and outrageous,--these are
circumstances of peculiar terror not to be exceeded in human experience,
and which yet have been often experienced by the dwellers in solitary
houses.
I have heard a lady describe her sensations in such a situation. A
figure in a man’s hat, tied down with an India silk handkerchief, blue
cloak and stuff petticoat, suddenly appeared before her, and demanded a
supply of articles of female attire. She offered half-a-crown to be rid
of this unpleasant guest, for there was something about her which filled
the lady with apprehension; but the money was refused, and with a
gesture that threw open the cloak, and revealed the real figure of a
man, with naked arms, and in a white Marseilles waistcoat. The demand
for women’s garments was complied with as speedily as possible, and the
person hastily went away. The next day, the lady on going to the
neighbouring town, beheld a large handbill in the post-office window,
offering a reward of 100_l._ for the apprehension of a delinquent
charged with high crimes and misdemeanours, and described as “a Dane
well known to the nobility and gentry, having been master of the
ceremonies at Brighton and Tunbridge Wells.” It was the very description
of her yesterday’s guest.
But when night is added to such a situation, how much is its fearfulness
increased! Imagine one or two unprotected women sitting by the fire of a
lone house, on a winter’s evening, with a consciousness of the
insecurity of their situation upon them. How instinct with danger
becomes every thing, every movement, every sound!--the stirring of the
trees--the whispering of the wind--the rustling of a leaf--the cry of a
bird. They are not wishing to listen, but cannot help it; they are all
sense; all eye and ear. A foot is heard without, and is lost again! A
face is suddenly placed against a pane in the window! the latch of the
door is slowly raised in their sight, or the click of one is heard where
it is not seen. Imagine this, and you imagine what has thrilled through
the heart, and frozen the blood of many a tenant of a solitary house.
These are not the least of the causes that contribute to produce that
timidity of disposition which, in an early part of the chapter, I have
said to belong to many country people. My grandfather’s house was such a
place. It stood in a solitary valley, with a great wood flanking the
northern side. It had all sorts of legends and superstitions hanging
about it. This field, and that lane, and one chamber or outbuilding or
another, had a character that made them all hermetically sealed to a
human foot after dark-hour, as it is there called. My grandmother was a
bold woman in some respects, but these fears were perfectly triumphant
over her; and she had, on one occasion, met with an incident which did
not make her feel very comfortable alone in her house, in the day time.
An Ajax of a woman once besieged her when left entirely by herself; who
finding the doors secured against her, began smashing the windows with
her fists, as with two sledge-hammers; and declared she would wash her
hands in her heart’s blood. My grandfather too, had had a little
adventure which just served to shew what courage he had, or rather had
not. In that primitive time and place, if a tailor were wanted, he did
not do his work at his own house, but came to that of his employer, and
there worked, day after day, till the job was finished; that is, till
all making and mending that could possibly be found about the house by a
general examination of garments, was completed. He then adjourned to
another house, and so went the round of the parish. I know not whether
the tailors of those primitive times were as philosophical as Heinrich
Johann Jung Stilling, and his fellows of Germany, who thus went from
house to house, and both there with their employers, and on Sundays when
they wandered into the woods, held the most interesting conversations on
religion, philosophy, and literature: if this were the case, our country
tailors have very much retrograded; and yet it would almost seem so, for
my grandfather was passionately fond of Paradise Lost, and on a terribly
snowy day had been reading it all day to the tailor, who had established
himself by the parlour fire, with all his implements and work before
him. He had been thus employed; but the tailor was gone, and the old
gentleman having supped, dropped asleep on the sofa. When he awoke it
was late in the night; no one had ventured to disturb him, but all had
gone to bed. The house was still; the fire burning low; but he had
scarcely become aware of his situation before he was aware also of the
presence of some one. As he lay, he saw a man step out of the next room
into the one in which he was. The man immediately caught sight of the
old gentleman, and suddenly stopped, fixing his eyes upon him; and
perhaps to ascertain whether he were asleep, he stepped back and drew
himself up in the shadow of the clock-case. The old gentleman slowly
raised himself up without a word, keeping his eyes fixed on the shadow
of the clock-case, till he had gained his feet, when with a hop, stride,
and jump, he cleared the floor, and flew up stairs at three steps at a
time. Here he raised a fierce alarm, crying--“there is a sturdy rogue
in the house! there is a sturdy rogue in the house!” But this alarm,
instead of getting anybody up, only kept them faster in bed. Neither
man, woman, nor child, would stir; neither son nor servant, except to
bolt every one his own chamber door. In the morning they found the thief
had taken himself off through a window, with the modest loan of a piece
of bacon.
This house, however, was not quite out of hearing of neighbours. Beyond
the wood was a village, thence called Wood-end; and a large horn was
hung in the kitchen at the Fall,--so this house was named, which was
blown on any occasion of alarm, and brought the inhabitants of the
Wood-end thither speedily. The cowardice which had grown upon this
family in such matters,--for in others they were bold as lions, and one
son was actually killed in a duel,--was become so notorious, that it
once brought a good joke upon them. The farm-servants were sitting,
after their day’s labour, by the kitchen fire at the close of a winter’s
day. Preparation was making for tea, and there were some of those rich
tea-cakes which wealthy country ladies know so well how to make, in the
act of buttering. Now I dare say that the sight of those delicious cakes
set the mouths of all those hearty working men a-watering; but there was
a cunning rogue of a lad amongst them, who immediately conceived the
felicitous design of getting possession of them. It is only necessary to
say that his name was Jack; for all Jacks have a spice of roguery in
them. Jack was just cogitating on this enterprise, when his mistress
said, “Jack, those sheep in the Hard-meadow have not been seen to-day.
Your legs are younger than anybody else’s; so up and count them before
you go to bed;--it is moonlight.” Jack, whose blood after the chill of
the day was circulating most luxuriously in his veins before that warm
hearth, felt inwardly chagrined that so many great lubberly fellows
should be passed over, and this unwelcome business be put upon him.
“Ay,” thought he, “they may talk of young legs, but mistress knows very
well that none of those burly fellows _dare_ go all the way to the
Hard-meadow to-night,--through the dingle; over the brook; and past the
hovel where old Chalkings was found dead last August, with his hand
still holding fast his tramp-basket, though his clothes were rotten on
his back! No! Jack must trudge, though the old gentleman himself were in
the way!” This persuasion furnished him at once with a scheme of
revenge, and of coming at the tea-cakes. He therefore rose slowly, and
with well-feigned reluctance; put on his clouted shoes, which he had put
off to indulge his feet with their accustomed portion of liberty and
warmth before he went to bed; and folding round him a sack-bag, the
common mantle and dread-naught of carters and farmers in wet or cold
weather, he went out. Instead of marching off to the Hard-meadow,
however, of which he had not the most remote intention, he went
leisurely round to the front door, which he knew would be unfastened;
for what inhabitants of an old country-house would think of fastening
doors till bed-time? He entered quietly; ascended the front stairs; and
reaching a large, old oaken chest which stood on the landing-place, all
carved and adorned with minster-work, he struck three bold strokes on
the lid with a pebble which he had picked up in the yard for the
purpose.
At the sound, up started every soul in the kitchen. “What is that?” said
every one at once in consternation. The mistress ordered the maid to run
and see; but the maid declared that she would not go for the world. “Go
you, then, Betty cook--go Joe--go Harry!” No, neither Betty, Joe, Harry,
nor anybody else would stir a foot. They all stood together aghast, when
a strange rumbling and grinding sound assailed their ears. It was Jack
rubbing the pebble a few times over the carved lid of the chest. This
was too much for endurance. A great fellow in a paroxysm of terror,
snatched down the horn from its nail, and blew a tremendous blast. It
was not long neither before its effect was seen. The people of Wood-end
came running in a wild troop, armed with brooms, pitchforks, spits,
scythes, and rusty swords. They were already assured by the dismal blast
of the horn that something fearful had occurred, but the sight of the
white faces of the family made them grow white too. “What is the matter!
What is the matter in heaven’s name?” “O! such sounds, such rumblings,
somewhere upstairs!” In the heat of the moment, if heat it could be
called, it was resolved to move in a body to the mysterious spot.
Swords, scythes, pitchforks fell into due rank; candles were held by
trembling hands; and in a truly _fearful_ phalanx they marched across
the sitting-room and reached the stair-foot. Here was a sudden pause;
for there seemed to be heavy footsteps actually descending. They
listened--tramp! tramp! it was true; and back fled the whole armed and
alarmed troop into the kitchen, and banged the door after them. What was
now to be done? Every thing which fear could suggest or terror could
enact was done. They were on the crisis of flying out of the house, and
taking refuge at Wood-end, when Jack was heard cheerfully whistling as
if returning from the field. Jack had made the tramp upon the stairs;
for, hearing the sound of the horn, and the approach of many feet below,
he thought it was time to be going; and had the armed troop been
courageous enough, they would have taken him in the fact. But their
fears saved both him and his joke. He came up with a well-affected
astonishment at seeing such a body of wild and strangely armed folk.
“What is the matter?” exclaimed Jack; and the matter was detailed by a
dozen voices, and with a dozen embellishments. “Pshaw!” said Jack, “it
is all nonsense, I know. It is a horse kicking in the stable; or a cat
that has chucked a tile out of the gutter, or something. Give me a
candle; I durst go!” A candle was readily put into his hands, and he
marched off, all following him to the foot of the staircase, but not a
soul daring to mount a single step after him. Up Jack went--“Why,” he
shouted, “here’s nothing!” “O!” they cried from below, “look under the
beds; look into the closets,” and look into every imaginable place. Jack
went very obediently, and duly and successively returned a shout, that
there was nothing; it was all nonsense! At this there was more fear and
consternation than ever. A thief might have been tolerated; but these
supernatural noises! Who was to sleep in such a house? There was nothing
for it, however, but for them to adjourn and move to the kitchen, and
talk it all over; and torture it into a thousand forms; and exaggerate
it into something unprecedentedly awful and ominous. The Wood-endians
were regaled with a good portion of brown-stout; thanked for their
valuable services, and they set off. The family was left alone.
“Mistress,” said Jack, “now you’d better get your tea; I am sure you
must want it.” “Nay Jack,” said she, “I have had _my_ tea: no tea for me
to-night. I haven’t a heart like thee, Jack; take my share and welcome.”
Jack sate down with the servant maids, and talked of this strange
affair, which he persisted in calling “all nonsense;” and devoured the
cakes which he had determined to win. Many a time did he laugh in his
sleeve as he heard this “great fright,” as it came to be called, talked
over, and painted in many new colours by the fireside; but he kept his
counsel strictly while he continued to live there; for he knew a
terrible castigation would be the sure consequence of a disclosure; but
after he quitted the place, he made a full and merry confession to his
new comrades, and occasioned one long laughter to run all the country
round. The people of the Fall, backed by the Wood-endians, persisted
that the noises were something supernatural, and that this was an
after-invention of Jack’s to disgrace them; but Jack and the public
continued to have the laugh on their side.
After all, I know not whether the world of sprites and hobgoblins may
not assume a greater latitude of action and revelation in these
out-of-the-world places than in populous ones; whether the Lars and
Lemures, the Fairies, Robin-goodfellows, Hobthrushes and Barguests, may
not linger about the regions where there is a certain quietness, a
simplicity of heart and faith, and ample old rooms, attics, galleries
and grim halls to range over, seeing that they hate cities, and
knowledge, and the conceit that attends upon them; for certainly, I
myself have seen such sights and heard such sounds as would puzzle Dr.
Brewster himself, with all his natural magic, to account for. In an old
house in which my father lived when I was a boy, we had such a capering
of the chairs, or what seemed such in the rooms over our heads; such
aerial music in a certain chimney corner, as if Puck himself were
playing on the bagpipes; such running of black cats up the bed-curtains
and down again, and disappearing no one knew how; and such a variety of
similar supernatural exhibitions, as was truly amusing. And a friend of
mine, having suffered a joiner to lay a quantity of elm boards in a
little room near a kitchen chimney to dry, was so annoyed by their
tumbling and jumbling about, that when the man came the next day to
fetch part of them, he desired him to take the whole, giving him the
reason for it. “O!” said the man, “you need not be alarmed at that--that
is always the way before a coffin is wanted!” As if the ghost of the
deceased came and selected the boards for the coffin of its old
world-mate the body.
But enough of the terrors of solitary houses without those of
superstition. I close my chapter; and yet I expect, dear readers, that
in every place where you peruse this, you will say, “O, these are
nothing to what I could have told. If Mr. Howitt had but heard so and
so.” Thank you, my kind and fair friends in a thousand places--I wish I
had.
CHAPTER VI.
MIDSUMMER IN THE FIELDS.
I never see a clear stream running through the fields at this beautiful
time of the year but I wish, like old Izaak Walton, to take rod and line
and a pleasant book, and wander away into some sylvan, or romantic
region, and give myself up wholly to the influence of the season; to
angle, and read, and dream by the ever-lapsing water, in green and
flowery meadows, for days and weeks, caring no more for all that is
going on in this great and many-coloured world, than if there was no
world at all beyond these happy meadows so full of sunshine and
quietness. Truly that good old man had hit on one of the ways to true
enjoyment of life. He knew that simple habits and desires were mighty
ingredients in genuine happiness; that to enjoy ourselves, we must first
cast the world and all its cares out of our hearts; we must actually
renounce its pomps and vanities; and then how sweet becomes every summer
bank; how bright every summer stream; what a delicious tranquillity
falls upon our hearts; what a self-enjoyment reigns all through it; what
a love of God kindles in it from all the fair things around. They may
say what they will of the old prince of anglers, of his cruelty and
inconsistency; from those charges I have vindicated him in another
place,--we know that he was pious and humane. We know that, in the
stillness of his haunts, and the leisure of his latter days, wise and
kind thoughts flowed in upon his soul, and that the beauty and
sweetness of nature which surrounded him, inspired him with feelings of
joy and admiration, that streamed up towards the clear heavens above him
in grateful thanksgiving. It is these things which have given to his
volume an everlasting charm; and that affect me, at this particular time
of the year, with a desire to haunt like places It may be the green
banks of the beautiful streams of Derbyshire--the Wye, or the Dove; for
now are they most lovely, running on amongst the verdant hills and bosky
dales of the Peak, surrounded by summer’s richest charms. Their banks
are overhung with deep grass, and many a fair flower droops over them;
the foliage of the trees that shroud their many windings, is most
delicate; and above them grey rocks lift their heads, or greenest hills
swell away to the blue sky. And as evening falls over them what a
softness clothes those verdant mountains! what a depth of shadow fills
those hollows! what a voice of waters rises on the hushed landscape! But
even here, in the vale of Trent, it is beautiful. There are a thousand
charms gathered about one of these little streams that are hastening
towards our fair river. They are charms that belong to this point of
time, and that in a week or two will be gone. The spring is gone, with
all her long anticipated pleasures. The snowdrop, the crocus, the
blue-bell, the primrose, and the cowslip, where are they? They are all
buried children of a delicate time, too soon hurried by.
But see! here are delights that will presently be as irrevocably gone.
It is evening. What a calm and basking sunshine lies on the green
landscape. Look round,--all is richness, and beauty, and glory. Those
tall elms which surround the churchyard, letting the grey tower get but
a passing glimpse of the river, and that other magnificent arcade of
similar trees which stretch up the side of the same fair stream,--how
they hang in the most verdant and luxuriant masses of foliage! What a
soft, hazy twilight floats about them! What a slumberous calm rests on
them! Slumberous did I say? no, it is not slumberous; it has nothing of
sleep in its profound repose. It is the depth of a contemplative trance;
as if every tree were a living, thinking spirit, lost in the vastness of
some absorbing thought. It is the hush of a dream-land; the motionless
majesty of an enchanted forest, bearing the spell of an infrangible
silence. And see, over those wide meadows, what an affluence of
vegetation! See how that herd of cattle, in colour and form, and
grouping, worthy of the pencil of Cuyp or Ruysdael, graces the plenty of
that field of most lustrous gold; and all round, the grass growing for
the scythe almost overtops the hedges in its abundance. As we track the
narrow footpath through them, we cannot avoid a lively admiration of the
rich mosaic of colours that are woven all amongst them--the yellow
rattle--the crimson stems and heads of the burnet, that plant of
beautiful leaves--the golden trifolium--the light quake-grass--the azure
milkwort, and clover scenting all the air. Hark! the cuckoo sends her
voice from the distance, clear and continuous:--
Hail to thee, shouting Cuckoo! in my youth
Thou wert long time, the Ariel of my hope,
The marvel of a summer! it did soothe
To listen to thee on some sunny slope,
Where the high oaks forbade an ampler scope,
Than of the blue skies upward--and to sit,
Canopied, in the gladdening horoscope
Which thou, my planet, flung--a pleasant fit,
Long time my hours endeared, my kindling fancy smit.
And thus I love thee still--thy monotone,
The selfsame transport flashes through my frame,
And when thy voice, sweet sibyl, all is flown
My eager ear, I cannot choose but blame.
O may the world these feelings never tame!
If age o’er me her silver tresses spread,
I still would call thee by a lover’s name,
And deem the spirit of delight unfled,
Nor bear, though grey without, a heart to Nature dead!
_Wiffen’s Aonian Hours._
And lo! there are the mowers at work! there are the hay-makers! Green
swaths of mown grass--haycocks, and wagons ready to bear them away--it
is summer, indeed! What a fragrance comes floating on the gale from the
clover in the standing grass, from the new-mown hay; and from those
sycamore trees, with all their pendant flowers. It is delicious; and yet
one cannot help regretting that the year has advanced so far. There, the
wild rose is putting out; the elder is already in flower; they are all
beautiful, but saddening signs of the swift-winged time. Let us sit down
by this little stream, and enjoy the pleasantness that it presents;
without a thought of the future. Ah! this sweet place is just in its
pride. The flags have sprung thickly in the bed of the brook, and their
yellow flowers are beginning to shew themselves. The green locks of the
water-ranunculuses are lifted by the stream, and their flowers form
snowy islands on the surface; the water-lilies spread out their leaves
upon it, like the palettes of fairy painters; and that opposite bank,
what a prodigal scene of vigorous and abundant vegetation it is. There
are the blue geraniums, as lovely as ever; the meadow-sweet is hastening
to put out its foam-like flowers, that species of golden-flowered
mustard occupies the connecting space between the land and water; and
hare-bells, the jagged pink lychnis, and flowering grass of various
kinds, make the whole bank beautiful. Every plant that is wont to shew
itself at this season, is in its place, to give its quota of the
accustomed character to the spot; every insect, to beautify it with its
hues, and enliven it with its peculiar sound:--
There is the grashopper, my summer friend,--
The minute sound of many a sunny hour
Passed on a thymy hill, when I could send
My soul in search thereof by bank and bower,
Till lured far from it by a foxglove flower,
Nodding too dangerously above the crag,
Not to excite the passion and the power
To climb the steep, and down the blossom drag:--
Them the marsh-crocus joined, and yellow water-flag.
Shrill sings the drowsy wassailer in his dome,
Yon grassy wilderness, where curls the fern,
And creeps the ivy; with the wish to roam
He spreads his sails, and bright is his sojourn,
’Mid chalices with dews in every urn;
All flying things a like delight have found--
Where’er I gaze, to what new region turn,
Ten thousand insects in the air abound,
Flitting on glancing wings that yield a summer’s sound.
_Wiffen’s Aonian Hours._
The May-flies, in thousands, are come forth to their little day of life,
and are flying up, and dropping again in their own peculiar way. The
stone-fly is found head downwards on the bole of that tree. The midges
are celebrating their airy and labyrinthine dances with an amazing
adroitness. These little creatures pass through a metamorphosis, as they
settle on you in your summer walks by river sides, that must strike the
careful observer with admiration. You may sometimes see a column of them
by the margin of the river, like a column of smoke; and when you come
near, numbers of them will settle upon your clothes--small, white, and
fleecy creatures. Observe them carefully, and you will see them shake
their wings, as in a little convulsive agony, press them to the sides of
their body, and fairly creep out of their skins. These skins, fine white
films, drawn like a glove from their bodies, and from their very legs,
which are but like fine hairs themselves, they leave behind, and dart
off into the air as to a new life, and with an accession of new beauty.
Dragon-flies of all sizes and colours are hovering, and skimming, and
settling amongst the water-plants, or on some natural twig, evidently
full of enjoyment. The great azure-bodied one, with its filmy wings,
darts past with reckless speed; and slender ones--blue and purple, and
dun, and black, with long jointed bodies, made as of shining silk by the
fingers of some fair lady, and animated for a week or two of summer
sunshine by some frolic spell, now pursue each other, and now rest as in
sleep. The whitethroat goes flying with a curious cowering motion over
the top of the tall grass from one bush to another, where it hops
unseen, and repeats its favourite “chaw-chaw.” The willow-warbler, the
mocking-bird of England, maintains its incessant imitations of the
swallow, the sparrow, the chaffinch, and the whitethroat, flitting and
chattering in the bushes that overhang the stream. The landrail repeats
its continuous “crake-crake” from the meadow grass, and the water itself
ripples on, clear and musical, and chequered with small shadows from
many a leaf and bent and moving bough. We lift up our heads--and in the
west what a ruby sun--what a gorgeous assemblage of sunset clouds!
Readers and friends, are these not the characters of June fields and
June brook-sides? Do they not recal to your memory many a pleasant
walk, many a pleasant place, and many pleasant friends? They must: for
there is nothing gives us so vivid a sense of the careering of time as
the passing of spring and summer.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PART III.
PICTURESQUE AND MORAL FEATURES OF THE COUNTRY.
CHAPTER I.
GIPSIES.
All hail! ye British Buccaneers!
Ye English Ishmaelites, all hail!
A jovial and marauding band,
Against the goodliest of the land
Ye go, and ye prevail.
Man’s cultured Eden casts ye forth,
Where’er ye list to wander wide,
Wild heaths and wilder glens to tread,
The spacious earth before you spread,
Your hearts your only guide.
_The Gipsy King._ By RICHARD HOWITT.
The picture of the Rural Life of England must be wofully defective which
should omit those singular and most picturesque squatters on heaths and
in lanes, the Gipsies. They make part and parcel of the landscape
scenery of England. They are an essential portion of our poetry and
literature. They are moulded into our memories, and all our
associations of the country by the surprise of our first seeing
them,--by the stories of their cunning, their petty larcenies, their
fortune-tellings,--and by the writings of almost all our best poets and
essayists. The poets being vividly impressed by anything picturesque,
and partaking of some mystery and romance, universally talk of them with
an unction of enjoyment. Romance writers have found them more profitable
subjects than her Majesty does--Scott and Victor Hugo especially. But
the first introduction to them, which most of us had in print, and to
which the mind of every man of taste must instantly revert on seeing or
hearing of them, is that most admirable and racy one in the
Spectator,--that gipsy adventure of our truly beloved and honoured
friend, Sir Roger de Coverley--that perfect model of an old English
gentleman. Who does not think of this scene with a peculiar delight,
especially since it has received so exquisite a representation from the
pencil of Leslie? “As I was yesterday riding out in the fields with my
friend Sir Roger, we saw at a little distance from us a troop of
gipsies. Upon the first discovery of them, my friend was in some doubt
whether he should not exert the Justice of the Peace upon a band of
lawless vagrants; but not having his clerk with him, who is a necessary
counsellor on these occasions, and fearing that his poultry might fare
the worse for it, he let the thought drop, but at the same time gave me
a particular account of the mischiefs they do in the country in stealing
peoples’ goods, and spoiling their servants. If a stray piece of linen
hangs upon a hedge, says Sir Roger, they are sure to have it; if the hog
loses its way in the fields, it is ten to one but it becomes their prey.
Our geese cannot live in peace for them.
“‘If a man prosecutes them with severity, his hen-roost is sure to pay
for it. They generally straggle into this part of the country about this
time of the year, and set the heads of our servant maids so agog for
husbands, that we do not expect to have any business done as it should
be while they are in the country. I have an honest dairymaid who crosses
their hands with a piece of silver every summer, and never fails being
promised the handsomest young fellow in the parish for her pains. Your
friend the butler has been fool enough to be seduced by them; and though
he is sure to lose a knife, a fork, or a spoon, every time his fortune
is told him, generally shuts himself up in the pantry with an old gipsy
for above half an hour once a twelvemonth. Sweethearts are the things
which they live upon, which they bestow very plentifully upon all those
that apply themselves to them. You see now and then some handsome young
jades amongst them,--the sluts have very often white teeth and black
eyes.’
“Sir Roger observing that I listened with great attention to his account
of a people who were so entirely new to me, told me that if I would,
they should tell us our fortunes. As I was very well pleased with the
knight’s proposal, we rid up and communicated our hands to them. A
Cassandra of the race, after having examined my lines very diligently,
told me that I loved a pretty maid in a corner; that I was a good
woman’s man; with some other particulars which I do not think proper to
relate. My friend Sir Roger alighted from his horse, and exposing his
palm to two or three that stood by him, they crumpled it into all
shapes, and diligently scanned every wrinkle that could be made in it;
when one of them, who was older and more sunburnt than the rest, told
him that he had a widow in his line of life. Upon which the knight
cried, ‘go, go, you are an idle baggage,’ and at the same time smiled
upon me. The gipsy, finding that he was not displeased in his heart,
told him, after a further inquiry into his hand, that his true-love was
constant, and that he should dream of her to-night. My old friend cried,
‘Pish,’ and bid her go on. The gipsy told him that he was a bachelor,
but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he
thought. The knight still repeated that she was an idle baggage, and bid
her go on. ‘Ah, master,’ says the gipsy, ‘that roguish leer of yours
makes a woman’s heart ache. You have not that simper about the mouth for
nothing.’ The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like
the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be
short, the knight left the money with her that he had crossed the hand
with, and got up again on his horse.
“As we were riding away, Sir Roger told me, that he knew several
sensible people who believed these gipsies now and then foretold very
strange things; and for half an hour together appeared more jocund than
ordinary. In the height of his good humour, meeting a common beggar upon
the road who was no conjuror, as he went to relieve him, he found his
pocket picked; that being a kind of palmistry at which this race of
vermin are very dexterous.”
This is a perfect piece of gipsyism. Wordsworth, Cowper, Crabbe, and
others of our poets, have given very graphic sketches of them; but in
all these descriptions you have the same characteristics, those of a
strange, vagabond, out-of-door, artful, and fortune-telling people. This
was for a long time the only point of view in which they were regarded.
That they were a thievish and uncivilizable race everybody knew, but
what was their real origin, or what their real country, few cared to
inquire. It, in fact, quite satisfied the public to consider them as
what they pretended to be, Egyptians. In all the descriptions I have
alluded to, no reference whatever is made to their origin. Addison alone
hints that he could give some historical remarks on this idle people,
but he does not think it worth while. But a more inquisitive age came.
It began to strike the minds of intelligent men, as the love of the
picturesque, the love of whatever was quiet, ancient, singular, or
poetic in the features of the country grew into a strong public feeling,
that there was something far more curious and mysterious about this
people than merely met the eye. That they were a peculiar variety of the
human species, and had hereditary causes, whether prejudices or
traditions, which stamped them, as distinctly and as stubbornly, a
separate portion of humanity as the Jews, became obvious enough. That
which had been supposed a mere gibberish in their mouths, was found to
be true Eastern language, and it was discovered that they not merely
“infested all Europe,” as Addison remarked, but all the world. In every
quarter of it they were found, exhibiting the same strange and
unchangeable lineaments, manners, and habits; in Egypt, as separate from
the Egyptians in speech and custom, as they are separate from the
English in England. Great curiosity was now excited concerning them, and
we get a glimpse, in the following verses of the Ettrick Shepherd, of
the speculations which arose out of the consequent inquiries.
Hast thou not noted on the by-way side,
Where England’s loanings stretch unsoiled and wide,
Or by the brook that through the valley pours,
Where mimic waves play lightly through the flowers,
A noisy crew far straggling through the glade,
Busied with trifles, or in slumber laid,
Their children lolling round them on the grass,
Or pestering with their sports the patient ass?
The wrinkled grandam there you may espy,
The ripe young maiden with her glossy eye;
Men in their prime--the striplings dark and dun,
Scathed by the storms, and freckled by the sun;
O mark them well when next the group you see,
In vacant barn, or resting on the lea;
They are the remnant of a race of old--
Spare not the trifle for your fortune told!
For there shalt thou behold with nature blent
A tint of mind in every lineament,
A mould of soul distinct, but hard to trace,
Unknown except to Israel’s wandering race;
For thence, as sages say, their line they drew--
O mark them well! the tales of old are true!
In these verses, which seem intended by Hogg as the commencement of a
poem on the Gipsy history, he goes on to tell us that they were a tribe
of Arabs that during the Crusades were induced to act as guides and
allies of the Crusaders against Jerusalem, and were therefore compelled,
on the retreat of the Christians, to flee too. It was not at all
surprising that they should be regarded as the real descendants of
Ishmael, for they have all the characteristics of his race,--an Eastern
people, retaining all their features of mind or body in unchangeable
fixedness--neither growing fairer in the temperate latitudes, nor darker
in the sultry ones; perpetual wanderers and dwellers in tents; active,
fond of horses, often herdsmen, artful, thievish, restrained by no
principle but that of a cunning policy from laying hands on any man’s
possessions; fond to enthusiasm of the chase after game, though obliged
to follow it at midnight; as everlastingly isolated by their organic or
moral conformation from the people amongst whom they dwell as the Jews
themselves. The very prophecy seemed fulfilled in them, beyond what it
could be in Araby itself, where they have been repeatedly subdued to the
dominion of some conqueror, while this tribe seems in all countries to
maintain its character as the genuine posterity of him who was to be a
wild hunter in perpetual independence.
The Germans, however, who pursue every subject of curious inquiry with
the same searching perseverance, took up this Gipsy mystery; and the
result of their researches, founded principally on their language, at
present leads to the adoption of the theory that they are a Hindu tribe.
For a full view of the subject, I must refer my readers to the works of
Grellman and Buttner, who have pursued this inquiry with great learning
and zeal, or to a very able summary in Malte Brun’s Geography: my limits
will compel me to take a more rapid notice of it. The sum and substance
of their case is this. They find occupation in some countries as smiths
and tinkers; they mend broken plates, and sell wooden ware. A class of
them in Moldavia and Wallachia lead a settled life, and gain a
subsistence by working and searching for gold in the beds of rivers.
Those in the Bannat of Hungary are horse-dealers, and are gradually
obeying the enactments of Joseph II., by which they are compelled to
cultivate the land; but the great majority in Europe abhor a permanent
residence and stated hours of labour. The women abuse the credulity of
the German and Polish peasants, who imagine that they cure their cattle
by witchcraft, and predict fortunate events by inspecting the lineaments
of the hand. It is lawful for the wives of the Tchinganes in Turkey to
commit adultery with impunity. Many individuals of both sexes,
particularly throughout Hungary, are passionately fond of music, the
only science in which they have, as yet, attained any degree of
perfection. They are the favourite minstrels of the country people: some
have arrived at eminence in cathedrals and the choirs of princes. Their
guitar is heard in the romantic woods of Spain; and many gipsies, less
indolent than the indolent Spaniards, exercise in that country the trade
of publicans. They follow willingly whatever occupations most men hate
and condemn. In Hungary and Transylvania, they are the flayers of dead
horses, and executioners of criminals; the mass of the nation is
composed of thieves and mendicants. The total number of these savages in
Europe has never been considered less than 300,000; Grellman says
700,000; of these, 150,000 are in Turkey; 70,000 in Wallachia and
Moldavia; 40,000 in Hungary and Transylvania; the rest are scattered
through Russia, Prussia, Poland, Germany, Jutland, Spain, and other
countries. Persia and Egypt are infested with them. They have appeared
in Spanish America.
Who then are these people? Grellman and Buttner do not hesitate to
pronounce them to be one of the low Indian castes, Soudras or Correvas,
expelled from their country during one of its great revolutions,
probably that of Tamerlane, about the year 1400. Their habits as
tinkers, musicians, horse-dealers, etc. etc., already alluded to, are
exactly in keeping with this supposition; but what is far stronger
evidence is, that their language, formerly supposed to be the gibberish
of thieves and pickpockets, is really Indostanée. In the tents of these
wanderers is spoken the dialects of the _Vedas_, the _Puranas_, the
_Brachmans_, and the _Budahs_. This, in different tribes, is in some
degree dashed with words of Sclavonic, Persic, Permiac, Finnic, Wogoul,
and Hungarian. The structure of the auxiliary verb is the same as others
in the Indo-Pelasgic tongues, but the pronouns have a remarkable analogy
with the Persic, and the declension of nouns with the Turkish. Pallas
infers from their dialect that their ancient country was Moultan, and
their origin the same as that of the Hindu merchants at present at
Astrakhan. Bartolomeo believes they come from Guzerat, perhaps from the
neighbourhood of Tatta, where a horde of pirates called Tchinganes still
reside. Lastly, Richardson boasts of having found them among the
Bazigurs, a wandering tribe of minstrels and dancers. No caste, however,
bears so strong a resemblance to them as that of the Soudras, who have
no fixed abodes, but live in tents, and sell baskets, mend kettles, and
tell fortunes.
The names by which they have been, or are known in different countries
are various. They call themselves Romi, Manusch, and Gadzi, each of
these appellatives being connected with a different language--the Copt,
the Sanscrit, and the Celtic. In Poland and Wallachia they are Zingani;
in Italy and Hungary, Zingari; in Lithuania, Zigonas; Ziguene in
Germany; Tchinganes in Turkey; the Atchinganes of the middle ages; in
Spain they are Gitanos; in France, Bohemians, from their having passed
out of Bohemia into that country. By the Persians they are called Sisech
Hindou, or Black Indians. But the most ancient and general name is that
of Sinte, or inhabitants of the banks of the Sinde, or Indus. The
celebrated M. Hasse, has indeed proved that for the last 3000 years
there have been in Europe wandering tribes bearing the name of Sigynes,
or Sinte. He considers the modern gipsies as the descendants of these
ancient hordes. Herodotus points out the Sigynes on the north side of
the Ister. Strabo describes a people called Siginii, inhabiting the
Hyrcanian mountains near the Caspian sea. Pliny speaks of the Caucasian
Singi, and of the Indian Singæ. Hesychius reconciles the opinions of the
ancients, and calls the Sinde an Indian people. They were noted for
their cowardice; for submitting to the lash of Scythian masters, the
prostitution of their women, whose name became a term of reproach.
Different branches of the same people were scattered through Macedonia,
in which was a Sinti district, and in Lemnos, where the Sinties were the
workmen of Vulcan.
It will now be sufficiently obvious to the reader what a singular,
ancient, and mysterious people are these gipsies, that haunt our lanes
and commons, and form so striking and poetical a feature in our country
scenery. After all the zealous and learned researches into their history
and origin, nothing appears yet established beyond the fact, that they
are older than Herodotus, the most ancient of profane historians; that
for more than 3000 years they have been wandering through the world as
they do at present; and that their language exhibits incontestable
evidence of an oriental origin. The ravages of Tamerlane may perhaps
help to account for the circumstance of their pressing upon Western
Europe in 1400 in such unusual numbers; but they were wanderers long
before Tamerlane’s days. Were they enemies of Krishna? for they boast of
having formerly rejected Christ. They pretend that they were once a
happy people, under kings of their own; but their traditionary knowledge
seems nearly extinct. Perhaps an increasing acquaintance with the East
and Eastern literature may cast some light on the origin of this
peculiar variety of the human race. In the mean time we may proceed to
take a close view of them as they now appear in this kingdom. From the
first moment of their attracting the public attention in this part of
Europe, they have always exhibited the same artful character,--a
character above the trammels of either superstition or religion. They
have therefore adopted the most plausible pretences to effect their
purposes; and for a long time triumphed over the credulity of the
christian princes, at all times over that of the common people. Their
first appearance in France, as related by Pasquin, is curious enough.
“On August 27th, 1427, came to Paris twelve penitents, Penanciers, as
they called themselves, viz.: a duke, an earl, and ten men, all on
horseback, and calling themselves good christians. They were of Lower
Egypt, and gave out, that not long before, the christians had subdued
their country, and obliged them to embrace christianity on pain of
death. Those who were baptized were great lords in their own country,
and had a king and queen there. Soon after their conversion, the
Saracens overran the country, and obliged them to renounce christianity.
When the emperor of Germany, the king of Poland, and the christian
princes heard of this, they fell upon them, and obliged the whole of
them, both great and small, to quit the country, and go to the Pope at
Rome, who enjoined them seven years’ penance, to wander over the world
without lying in a bed.
“They had been wandering five years when they came to Paris. First the
principal people, and soon after the commonalty, about 100 or
120--reduced, according to their account, from 1000 or 1200, when they
went from home; the rest, with their king and queen, being dead. They
were lodged by the police at some distance from the city, at Chapel St.
Denis.
“Nearly all of them had their ears bored, and wore two silver rings in
each, which they said were esteemed ornaments in their country. The men
were black; their hair curled; the women, remarkably black; their only
clothes a large old duffle garment, tied over their shoulders with a
cloth or cord, and under it a miserable rocket. In fact, they were the
most poor, miserable creatures that ever had been seen in France; and,
notwithstanding their poverty, there were amongst them women who, by
looking into people’s hands, told their fortunes, and what was worse,
they picked people’s pockets of their money, and got it into their own,
by telling these things through art magic, etc.”
The subtlety of these modern Gibeonites cannot be sufficiently admired.
They did not venture to alarm the country by coming at once in full
strength into it, but sent a detachment, mounted on horseback as
princes, to pave the way by their tale of sufferings; then came a larger
troop, in true Gibeonitish condition, to excite the popular
commiseration; and that being done, their numbers gradually increased;
and under these and similar pretences, they rambled over France for a
whole century, when their real character being sufficiently obvious, and
their numbers daily increasing, they were banished by proclamation. The
same policy was pursued towards them in all the countries of Europe, if
we except Hungary and Wallachia. In Spain, sentence of banishment being
found ineffectual, in 1492 an edict of extermination was published; but
they only slunk into the mountains and woods, and reappeared in a while
as numerously as before. The order of banishment not succeeding in
France, in 1561 all governors of cities were commanded to drive them
away with fire and sword; and in 1612 a new order for their
extermination came out. In 1572, they were expelled from the territories
of Milan and Parma, as they had before been driven from the Venetian
boundaries. In Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, repeated enactments
were made for their expulsion. In Germany, from 1500 to 1577, various
similar decrees were promulgated against them. Under these laws they
suffered incredible miseries. They were imprisoned; chased about like
wild beasts, and put to death without mercy: but, as the European states
did not act in concert, when they were driven from one they found an
asylum in another; and whenever the storm blew over, they again
gradually reappeared in their old haunts. The Empress Theresa, and
afterwards the Emperor Joseph II., seem to have been the only sovereigns
who set themselves in earnest to reclaim and civilize this singular
people; and we have seen that in Hungary some of them are gradually
submitting to the regulations made by these wise monarchs.
Their introduction to this kingdom, and their after-treatment were
similar. At first they were received as princes and kings, and excited
commiseration by the tale of their injuries. They had royal and
parliamentary passes granted them, to go through the country seeking
relief, as many of the parish records yet bear testimony. So late as
1647 there appears an entry in the constable’s accounts at Uttoxeter, in
Staffordshire, of four shillings being given to forty-six Egyptians,
travelling with a pass from parliament, to seek relief by the space of
six months. But when this delusion was past, and it was seen that they
had no intention of quitting the country, they became persecuted by
justices of the peace and parish constables, as thieves and vagrants;
and the rapid enclosures of waste lands during the war, tended greatly
to break up their haunts, and put them into great straits.
About twenty years ago John Hoyland, a minister of the Society of
Friends, being struck with commiseration for their condition, began to
inquire into their real character; and the researches of Grellman being
made known to him, he visited their encampments in various places in
Northamptonshire, Hainault Forest, and Norwood, near London. He also
sought them out in their winter quarters in London; and the result of
his inquiries satisfied him that the English gipsies were a genuine
portion of the great tribe described by Grellman; that they possessed
the same oriental language, specimens of which he has given in his
history. Mr. Hoyland could not ascertain what were the actual numbers of
these people in England. They had been stated in parliament to be not
less than 30,000, but on what authority did not appear; but it was very
evident that enclosures, and the severity of the magistrates, had
reduced their numbers. Probably many of them had emigrated. Norwood used
to be their great resort, but its enclosure had broken up that
rendezvous, yet it nevertheless appeared, that considerable numbers
wintered in London, and at the earliest approach of spring set out on
their summer progress through various parts of the country, especially
in the counties of Surrey, Bedford, Buckingham, Hereford, Monmouth,
Somerset, Wilts, Southampton, Cambridge, and Huntingdon.
Subsequent inquiries have shewn that these people retire into other
large towns in winter besides London, particularly Bristol. That in town
their chief haunts are in Tottenham-court-road, Banbridge-street,
Bolton-street, Church-lane, Battle-bridge, Tunbridge-street,
Tothill-fields, and White-street. In Bristol, they are chiefly found in
St. Philips, Newfoundland-street, Bedminster, and at the March and
September fairs. About London, in April, May, and June, they get work in
the market-gardens. In July and August they move into Sussex and Kent
for harvest-work, where they continue. Through September, great numbers
of them find employment in the hop districts of those counties, and of
Surrey. They constantly encamp on the commons near London. On Wimbledon
Common, at Christmas 1831, there were no less than seventy of them. In
the parks of Richmond, Greenwich, Windsor, and all the resorts of summer
visitants from town, the gipsy women are to be found exercising their
vocation of fortune-tellers. On this account many of them encamp about
Blackheath, Woolwich-heath, Lordship-lane, near Deptford, and
Plum-street, near Woolwich. The Archbishop’s Wall, near Canterbury;
Staple and Wingham Well, near the same city, and Buckland, near Dover,
and the New Forest, Hampshire, are great haunts; they also flock in
great numbers to Ascot, Epsom, and other races.
Mr. Hoyland extended his researches to Scotland, and the most prompt
assistance was offered him in his inquiries in that country. A circular
was dispatched to the sheriff of every county, soliciting, through the
medium of an official organ, all the intelligence which could be
obtained on the subject. It was found that there were very few gipsies
in Scotland at all. From thirteen counties the reports were--“No gipsies
resident in them.” From most others the answer was, that they appeared
there only as occasional passengers. The Border appeared to be their
chief resort, and respecting those Sir Walter Scott, then plain Walter
Scott, addressed a very characteristic letter to the author. His account
of them tallies exactly with that he has given in his celebrated novels.
He and Mr. Smith, the Baillie of Kelso, agree in describing them as a
single colony at Yetholm, and one family removed thence to Kelso. This
colony appears to have acquired a character more daring and impetuous
than the gipsies of England; in fact, to have exhibited the true old
Border spirit: probably partly from example and partly from intercourse
with some of the Border families. Mr. Baillie Smith gives the following
instance of this spirit:--“Between Yetholm and the Border farms in
Northumberland, there were formerly, as in most border situations, some
uncultivated lands, called the Plea Lands, or Debateable Lands, the
pasturage of which was generally eaten up by the sorners and vagabonds
on both sides of the marches. Many years ago, Lord Tankerville and some
other of the English borderers, made their request to Sir David Bennet
and the late Mr. Wauchope, of Niddry, that they would accompany them at
a riding of the Plea Lands, who readily complied with their request.
They were induced to this, as they understood that the gipsies had
taken offence, on the supposition that they might be circumscribed in
their pasture for their shelties, and asses, which they had held a long
time, partly by stealth and partly by violence. Both threats and
entreaties were employed to keep them away; and at last Sir David
obtained a promise from some of the heads of the gang, that none of them
would shew their faces on the occasion.
“They, however, got upon the hills in the neighbourhood, whence they
could see every thing that passed. At first they were very quiet, but
when they saw the English Court-Book spread out on a cushion before the
clerk, and apparently taken in a line of direction interfering with that
which they considered to be their privileged ground, it was with great
difficulty that the most moderate of them could restrain the rest from
running down and taking vengeance even in sight of their own lord of the
manor. They only abstained for a short time, and no sooner had Sir David
and the other gentlemen taken leave of each other in the most polite and
friendly manner, as border chiefs are wont to do, since border feuds
ceased, and had departed to a sufficient distance, than the clan, armed
with bludgeons and pitchforks, and such other hostile weapons as they
could find, rushed down in a body, and before the chiefs on either side
had reached their homes, there was neither English tenant, horse, cow,
or sheep, left upon the premises.”
This account of their descent on the Plea Lands is like one of Sir
Walter Scott’s own vivid sketches of border life; and the following
anecdote, also related by Mr. Baillie Smith, shews how truly they had
imbibed the border spirit of clanship. “When I first knew any thing
about the colony, old Will Faa was their king, or leader, and had held
the sovereignty for many years. Meeting at Kelso with Mr. Walter Scott,
whose discriminating habits and just observations I had occasion to know
from his youth, and at the same time seeing one of my Yetholm friends in
the horse-market, I merely said to Mr. Scott, ‘Try to get before that
man with the long drab coat; look at him on your return, and tell me
whether you ever saw him, and what you think of him.’ He was so good as
to indulge me; and rejoining me said without hesitation, ‘I never saw
the man that I know of, but he is one of the gipsies of Yetholm that you
told me of several years ago.’ I need scarcely say that he was perfectly
right.
“The descendants of Faa, now take the name of _Fall_, from the Messrs.
Fall of Dunbar, who, they pride themselves in saying, are of the same
stock and lineage. When old Will Faa was upwards of eighty years of age,
he called on me at Kelso, in his way to Edinburgh, telling me that he
was going to see the laird, the late Mr. Nisbett of Dirleton, as he
understood that he was very unwell, and himself now being old, and not
so stout as he had been, he wished to see him once more before he died.
The old man set out by the nearest road, which was by no means his
common practice. Next market-day some of the farmers informed me that
they had been in Edinburgh, and seen Will Faa upon the bridge (the south
bridge was not built then), that he was tossing about his old brown hat,
and huzzaing with great vociferation, that he had seen the laird before
he died. Indeed Will himself had no time to lose, for having set his
face homewards, by the way of the sea-coast, to vary his route, as is
the general custom with the gang, he only got the length of Coldingham
when he was taken ill and died.”
No one can fail to recognise in these border gipsies the Faas and
Gordons of Guy Mannering, the desperate clan of Meg Merrilies and
Derncleugh. Scott, indeed, informs us that his prototype of Meg
Merrilies was Jean Gordon, an inhabitant of Kirk-Yetholm in the Cheviot
hills, adjoining to the English border. The Faas, of which family her
mother was, were the lineal descendants of John Faa, who styled himself
Lord and King of Little Egypt, and with a numerous retinue entered
Scotland, in the reign of Queen Mary.
The difference between the English and Scotch gipsies was singularly
exemplified in Jean Gordon’s own family. The English gipsies have
generally had the policy to commit no capital offences; but Jean’s sons
were all hanged one day. Scott, in the eighth chapter of Guy Mannering,
says, their mixture with the Border people gave them a peculiar
ferocity, quite alien to their original character. “They understood all
out-of-door sports, especially otter-hunting, fishing, and finding game.
They had the best and boldest terriers, and sometimes had good pointers
for sale. In winter the women told fortunes, the men shewed tricks of
legerdemain; and these accomplishments helped to wile away a weary or
stormy evening in the circle of the ‘farmer’s ha’.’ The wildness of
their character, and the indomitable pride with which they despised all
regular labour, commanded a certain awe, which was not diminished by the
consideration that these strollers were a vindictive race, and were
restrained by no check either of fear or conscience, from taking
desperate vengeance upon those who had offended them. These tribes were,
in short, the _Parias_ of Scotland, living like wild Indians among
European settlements; and like them, judged of rather by their own
customs, habits, and opinions, than as if they had been members of the
civilized part of the community. Some hordes of them yet remain, chiefly
in such situations as afford a ready escape into a waste country, or
into another jurisdiction. Nor are the features of their character much
softened. Their numbers are, however, so greatly diminished, that
instead of one hundred thousand, as calculated by Fletcher of Saltoun,
it would now perhaps be impossible to collect above five hundred
throughout all Scotland.”
Since writing so far, I have visited Kirk-Yetholm, and can testify to
the correctness of these details. It was in June, 1836, that I was at
this remarkable haunt of this singular class of gipsies. The tribe was
then, according to their regular custom, encamping, probably far off on
the heaths of Scotland, or in the green lanes of England; and their
houses, to the number of about a score, stood along one side of the
village, all tenantless, with closed shutters, and doors barricadoed
with boards, or locked or nailed up. We asked to whom they belonged, and
were told that they were the _Trayvelers_, Anglice, Traveller’s houses.
They had a strange look of desertion amid the peopled village. Along the
lane side leading to the neighbouring hills extended a strip of land,
divided into as many allotments as there were houses, in which were
growing their crops of corn and potatoes, left till their return to
providence and the forbearance of their neighbours; and we were assured
that the tribe would not make their appearance here till the crops were
ready to house, when they would come and get them in, and then away
again till the setting in of winter. We found the feud between them and
the shepherds still kept up as hotly as ever, and likely to continue so,
from the peculiar location of the land above spoken of, on which they
claim to pasture their horses. About a mile from the village lies a
region of pastoral hills, most beautiful in their greenness and
loftiness. They are covered from vale to summit with the softest and
finest turf, and their loftiest steeps are dotted with flocks. In the
very midst of these hills, loftier and more naked than the rest, rises
the one which the gipsies and other inhabitants of Yetholm claim.
Nothing could be more ingeniously contrived, if by contrivance it had
been done, to effect a constant bickering between the shepherds and the
Yetholmers. The gipsies of course drive their horses up to their own
hill, and nothing is more natural than that seeing better pasture all
around them, and no fence to prevent them, they should go down and enjoy
it. It is equally natural that the shepherds should be on the look-out,
and the moment they find the horses trespassing, should drive them out
into the lane leading to the village, and close the gates behind them.
This also is expected by the gipsies, and the moment the horses make
their appearance at the village, they are driven back again to the
hills. Here is perpetual food for resentment and hostility, and to such
a height does it sometimes rise, that a gentleman of Kelso informed me
that he has seen at Yetholm wool-fair such affrays between the gipsies
and the shepherds as would outdo Donnybrook.
We found a Will Faa still the reputed king of the tribe. He was an old
man, having none of the common features of the gipsy--his Border blood
having done away with the black eyes and swarthy skin; but Will had all
the propensities of the gipsy, except that of encamping; smuggling,
fishing, and shooting appeared to have been the business of his life. We
were told that in an affray with the revenue officers he had defended a
narrow bridge somewhere near Bamborough Castle, while his party made
their escape, and had stood fighting singly with his cudgel, till it was
cut down by the cutlasses of the officers to “twa nieves lang,” and till
he finally got a cut across the arm which disabled him. When we asked
him of the truth of this story, his grey eyes kindled up into a wild
fire, and stretching out his two arms together, he shewed us, with a
significant gesture, that one was still at least two inches longer than
the other. Old Will Faa had risen into great importance through the
writings of Sir Walter Scott. He told us that Sir Martin Archer Shee had
been down to take his likeness. He was in daily request at the houses
of the neighbouring nobility and gentry to catch trout for them, being
intimately acquainted with all the streams of the country round, and all
the arts of filling his creel out of them. Will, therefore, is sure to
be found either by the side of one of the trout streams, or in the
kitchen of some of the neighbouring halls, telling his exploits and
drinking his toddy. His niece, who was absent with the tribe, was said
to be the belle of the camp; a true gipsy beauty, dark and “weel
fa’ured.”
Such is the present state of the gipsies of England and Scotland. Their
numbers are evidently everywhere on the decrease; yet what do remain in
England retain all their ancient characteristics. These characteristics
have never been more accurately delineated than by Richard Howitt, in
his poem of the “Gipsy King,” in the Metropolitan Magazine for June
1836. The groups proceeding to the coronation of their king are living.
Now come in groups the gipsy tribes,
From northern hills, from southern plains;
And many a panniered ass is swinging
The child that to itself is singing
Along the flowery lanes.
Stout men are loud in wrangling talk,
Where older tongues are gruff and tame;
Keen maiden laughter rings aloft,
Whilst many an undervoice is soft
From many a talking dame.
Their beaver hats are weather stained,--
The one black plume is sadly gay;
Their squalid brats are slung behind,
In cloaks that flutter to the wind,
Of scarlet, brown, and grey.
The king himself is distinguished by some touches that are the life
itself, but which I never recollect seeing elsewhere introduced.
The slouching hat our hero wore,
The crown wherewith he king was crowned;
Wherein a pipe and a crow’s feather
Were stuck in fellowship together,
Was by a hundred winters browned.
His sceptre was a stout oak sapling,
Round which a snake well-carved was wreathed;
Cunning and strength that well bespoke,
Whilst from his frame, as from an oak,
“Deliberate valour breathed.”
His footstool was the solid earth;
His court spread out in pomp before him,
The heath arrayed in summer’s smiles;
His empire broad the British isles;
His dome the heaven’s arched o’er him.
Antique and flowing was his dress;
And from his temples, bold and bare,
Fell back in many a dusky tress,
As liberal as the wilderness,
His ample growth of hair.
Like Cromwell’s was his hardy front,
Where thought but feeling none was shewn;
Where underneath a flitting grace,
Was firmly built up in his face,
A hardness as of stone.
They are not to be confounded with a tribe of wandering potters, who
live in tents like them. The true gipsies are readily distinguished by
their invariable jet-black hair, black sparkling eyes, Indian
complexions, and their genuine oriental language. On the extensive
heaths of Surrey, since my residence in that county, I have met with
frequent camps of them. In the midland counties, although there is less
waste land, they are not unfrequently to be seen. They are there chiefly
the Lovell, Boswell, and Kemp gangs. They are great people still for
kings and chiefs. Every district has its king. One of these died in the
summer of 1835, in their camp in Bestwood Park, in Nottinghamshire; and
thousands of people went to see him lie in state. They conveyed his body
in a cart to Eastwood, a distance of nine miles, and would fain have
stipulated with the clergyman for his interment in the church; not on
account of any notion of the sanctity of the place, but for its
security. This being refused, they chose a place in the churchyard, for
which they paid a handsome sum, and ordered it to be fenced off with
iron railings. An old beldame of the tribe said to me, that it was hard
that he could not be buried in a church, as most of his ancestors had
been before him.
This gang had no less than nine horses, which in the day time grazed in
the bare lanes; but if they were not turned into the fields at night,
they throve wonderfully on bad commons. The farmers complained
dreadfully of their pulling up their hedges for fuel. The whole race
seems to have no fear of man; they are troubled with no _mauvaise
honte_. The men seldom condescend to solicit you, but the women are
always anxious to lay hold of your money under pretence of telling your
fortune; and the moment you approach their encampment, out comes a troop
of little impudent, though not insolent, rogues, to beg every thing and
any thing they can. The women, many of them, in their youth, are fine
strapping figures, with handsome brown faces and most brilliant and
speaking eyes,--they have a peculiar _poco-curante_ air and jaunty gait,
and are extremely fond of finery. Their costume is unique, and pretty
uniform,--scarlet cloaks, black beaver hats with broad slouching brims,
or black velvet bonnets with large wide pokes trimmed with lace; a
handkerchief thrown over the head under the bonnet, and tied beneath the
chin; long pendant ear-rings, black stockings, and ankle-boots. So far
from shunning any intercourse or inquiries, they approach you with a
ready smile and a style of flattery peculiar to them. “A good day to
you, sir; your honour is born to fortune. I see that by the cast of your
countenance. It was a right luckly planet that shone on your honour’s
birth!” If you know any thing of their language, they are only too glad
to talk to you in it. Accost a gipsy with “Shaushan, Palla?” “how do you
do, brother?” and you will see the effect.
This singular race of people, of whom Grellman calculates there are not
less than 700,000 in Europe, seemed to demand a more comprehensive
account in the Rural Life of England, than has hitherto been given in
any one work. Many of my readers, I am persuaded, will regard them for
their antiquity, the mystery of their origin, the strangeness of their
history and life, with deeper feelings than they have hitherto done; and
it may be well for such as live in those parts of the country which the
gipsies haunt, to ask themselves whether something may not be done by
education, and other means, to reclaim those wild denizens of heaths and
lanes, or to give them some greater portion of the knowledge and
benefits of civilized life. A considerable number have sent their
children to schools during the winters in London; and these children,
though compared by one of their schoolmasters, at their first entrance,
to wild birds suddenly put into a cage, and ready to beat themselves
against the bars, having no sense of restraint, soon became not only
perfectly orderly, amongst the very first for quickness and avidity in
learning, but expressed the utmost regret when obliged to leave at
spring. I once saw a woman in a gipsy tent, reading the Bible to a
circle of nine children, all her own! and though, on coming near, her
blue eyes and light hair shewed her to be an English woman, the
daughter, as I found, of a gamekeeper, who had married one of the
Boswell gang, yet the interest which the children took in her reading of
the Bible, and the interest which she assured me the whole camp took in
it, were sufficient evidence that it is only for want of being taught
that they still remain in ignorance of the best knowledge. They have
been so long treated with contempt and severity, that they naturally
look on all men as their enemies. For my part, when I see a horde of
them coming on some solitary way, with their dark Indian faces, their
scarlet-cloaked women, their troops of little vivacious savages, their
asses and horses laden with beds and tents, and, trudging after them,
their guardian dogs,--I cannot help looking on them as an Eastern tribe,
as fugitives of a most ancient family, as a living enigma in human
history--and feeling that, with all their Arab-like propensities, they
have great claims on our sympathies, and on the splendid privileges of a
christian land.
GIPSIES OF NEW FOREST.
Since the former edition went to press, I have learned that the New
Forest has long been a great haunt of gipsies, particularly of one
remarkable family--the Stanleys. I hear with pleasure that the Home
Missionary Society has likewise taken up the cause of the gipsies in
various parts of the country with a good deal of spirit, and a volume
has been put into my hands, entitled “The Gipsies’ Advocate.” This is
edited by the Rev. James Crabbe, a worthy dissenting minister of
Southampton, and has run into a third edition. Mr. Crabbe seems a most
earnest and indefatigable apostle of this neglected people. Hoyland’s
“Survey of the Gipsies,” together with some painfully interesting
circumstances connected with the execution of one of them, turned his
attention to their case so early as 1827. He soon fell in with one of
the New Forest clan, William Stanley, who, having in his youth been a
soldier, had become acquainted with the Bible through attending church,
and eventually became so anxious to christianize his gipsy kinsmen, that
he went to travel about amongst them, reading the Bible in their tents.
Mr. Crabbe soon formed a committee in Southampton for the reclamation of
the gipsies, visiting them in their camps, and persuading them to allow
their children to be put to school, and to learn trades. He visited the
camps in various places, and sought them out, and preached to them at
Epsom Races, and in the hop-grounds at Farnham. Stanley served as his
messenger and assistant. The committee seems to have met with great
success. At the date of the edition which I quote, 1832, there were
twenty-three reformed gipsies living in Southampton, and upwards of
forty attending divine service there. The gipsies in almost all
instances had evinced the most lively sense of the attention shewn them,
and a desire to avail themselves of the privileges of learning to read
and of hearing preaching. This little volume contains also some
interesting accounts of the attempts to civilize the gipsies in Russia
and Germany, and particularly of the zealous endeavours of the Countess
von Reden of Buchwald in Silesia.
But from the gipsies of the continent we must return to those of the New
Forest of England; of whom Miss Bowles, now Mrs. Southey, was kind
enough to send me the following curious particulars:--
“The gipsies who mostly frequent this neighbourhood,--or did frequent
it, for their visits are now ‘few and far between,’--are Lees and
Stanleys; I should have said Stanleys and Lees--for the former tribe
hold up their heads very high above the Lees, and call themselves ‘the
better sort of travellers.’ Some years ago a party of these Stanleys
came from a distant part of the country to attend a wedding at Newport,
in the Isle of Wight. They stopped at the turnpike-gate near my house,
being on friendly terms with the tollman and his family, who had often
done them kind offices, and to the daughter who is now in my service
(1838) they entrusted the important office of making up grey silk
spencers and smart flowered chintz petticoats for each of the women;
encamping in the neighbourhood while the work was in hand, and ‘_very
particular_’ the ladies were about ‘_good fits_,’ etc. Then they went to
the best hatters in the town, and ordered hats on purpose for them--of
the long felt, wide-brimmed sort for the women. The tradesmen hesitated
about giving credit, as they required, till their return from the
island, at which they were highly indignant. ‘What!’ stormed one, whom
they called Brother John--‘What! refuse credit to a gentleman
ratcatcher!’ But they obtained it, and paid honourably on their return,
and as honestly remunerated the sempstress for making their gay dresses.
“This same party often camped at a spot in the forest called Marl-pit
Oak--and nearer to my residence on a hill near the road, called Gally
Hill, and were not ill thought of by the farmers and poor people, and
one or two forest girls would sometimes steal to their tents, sure of a
savoury regale. The wonder is, how they lived so well--for their kettles
were not filled with the produce of poaching or of thefts in the
hen-roost--still less with meat ‘_that had died of its own accord_,’ as
the people say. No; they used frequently to go back from the town laden
with good joints honestly purchased and paid for at the butchers.
“On one occasion, a day or two before Easter Sunday, Brother John and
two of the ladies of the tribe displayed their marketing to my
neighbours at the turnpike-gate--a fine breast, loin, and leg of veal.
‘To-morrow’s Easter Sunday;’ said they, ‘and we always have a feast of
veal on that day.’ (Singular! is it not?) ‘How can you contrive to roast
it at your fires?’ inquired the woman who is now my servant. ‘Better _a
deal_ than you can at your poor pinched in grates,’ was the answer; ‘and
then we shall have rice-puddings, capital rice-puddings.’ ‘But you can’t
_bake_, if you can roast?’ ‘Can’t we? come and taste if you ever knowed
better baking in your life.’ (I should have accepted the invitation if
it had been made to me). And then they described their culinary process.
Having mixed their ingredients--all of the best--in a large brown pan of
that sort of ware which is fireproof, they covered it with another of
the same sort, set it deep in a bed of glowing peat-ashes, and heaped it
over to a foot depth with the same. I have no doubt of the excellency of
the method,--not very unlike that in use by many of the savage tribes.
There were seven daughters of this particular family of the Stanleys,
all splendid beauties;--one but too celebrated, ‘the beautiful Caroline
Stanley.’ She fell into worse company than that of her own people, and
on two or three occasions was absent from them for a year and more at a
time, living in splendour as ‘maitresse en titre,’ to more than one
officer of high rank; dashed about in elegant carriages, clothed in
‘silken sheen,’ and all sorts of bravery, and carried it with a high
hand (poor Caroline!) through her seasons of ‘bad eminence.’ But all the
while she was out of her element; the free creature of the woods pined
to be _there_ again; and some fine morning she would be off without
leave taking, and leaving behind her every atom of the dear-bought
finery, that had become fetters to her. I knew her well by sight, and
such a _Cleopatra_ of _regal beauty_ I never could have imaged to
myself.
“A short time before her first initiation in civilization and
corruption, I saw her showing off in high style. I called to give some
order to my milliner, but sat quietly down to await her leisure, finding
her engaged in high disputation with the gipsy beauty, who was rating
her in no measured terms for some deviation from orders in the making of
a bonnet which Caroline was in the act of trying on before the glass.
And such airs and graces she gave herself! I never was more diverted.
“‘Woman!’ she called the poor milliner, at every sentence. ‘Did you
think, because I’m a gipsy, I’d wear such a thing as this,’ said she,
and dashed off the bonnet--an expensive one of black velvet, with a deep
lace flounce--to the farther end of the room. When I last heard of her,
a few years back, she was wandering--withered and haggard--with her
diminished tribe. It has been much diminished of late years by the
conviction and transportation of many of the men for horse-stealing; of
their proficiency in which I have had sad experience. Some years ago, I
lost a very beautiful and favourite pony, at the same time that a rather
valuable mare was stolen from a neighbour of mine (a farrier), and a
young galloway from another man, named Edward Pierce. Having done every
thing in our power to regain our lost steeds, we at last gave up the
pursuit as useless.
“Nearly two years afterwards, my neighbour, the farrier, came to ask me
if I would join him and Pierce in some further endeavours to recover the
stolen horses, which we had a fair chance of doing, he thought,
according to the letter he presented for my perusal, a curious one it
was, dated, ‘The Hulks, Portsmouth.’ The writer (one of the Stanleys)
stated, that having been condemned to seven years’ transportation, for a
recent offence, he wished to stock himself with a few comforts for his
voyage, and, therefore, if we, the losers of such and such horses,
stolen at such a time, would make it ‘worth his while,’ he would put us
in a way to have them back again. He began his letter (it was addressed
to Pierce), ‘Dear friend,’ and said at the conclusion, that not liking
to go by his own name in such a place, and in his present circumstances,
he had taken the liberty to use his, and begged to be addressed as
Edward Pierce. One of the girl Stanleys married a Blake, and prosperous
vagabonds they were,--kept a chaise-cart, and a fine horse, with
expensive plated harness. On the occasion of the christening of their
first child, which took place at Beaulieu, they invited all the farmers
and respectable country folk for miles round to a feast on the heath,
and a sumptuous feast it was, and every thing ‘done decently and in
order.’ Abundance of good things, eatables and drinkables.
“The tables, borrowed for the occasion, almost elegantly spread. Liquor
in abundance, good ale and strong, but no abuse of it. Fiddling and
dancing afterwards till the long summer day closed in, and then the wild
hosts and their civilized guests parted with mutual good-will; the most
respectable of the latter (good substantial farmers, their wives and
families) protesting they had never been so well treated, or in company
more decently conducted.
“Mr. Crabbe alludes at p. 29 of the ‘Gipsies’ Advocate,’ to a
circumstance connected with gipsy burials, as having occurred in the
neighbouring county of Wilts. I suspect it to be the same which was
related to me two years ago, by the vicar of a parish in the New Forest,
who had it from his intimate friend the curate of a Wiltshire parish,
the name of which I forget. A small party of gipsies had remained
stationary in the neighbourhood for an unusual length of time, detained
by the illness of one of them, a very young woman and beautiful--lately
married to a man as comely as herself. ‘One of the finest young men,’
the curate said, ‘he ever set eyes on.’ The woman died, and soon after
the husband came, almost in a state of distraction, to apply for leave
to bury her in the church. The permission could not be granted, though
the man pleaded with passionate earnestness, saying, _any required sum_,
however large, should be forthcoming, might he but lay her in the
church. Finding that to be impossible, he bought a piece of ground in
the churchyard, made a deep vault, where she was interred, and over it
caused a monument to be erected, which was not only costly but in good
taste, as was the simple record inscribed on it. This occurred several
years ago, and not once has he omitted an annual visit to the grave
since the day of his wife’s interment.
“The magistrates, country gentlemen, and farmers, in the neighbourhood
of Mr. Crabbe’s gipsy colony, complain bitterly of the effects of his
benevolent scheme--affirming that it subjects them to the perpetual
depredations of swarms of vagrants of all sorts, and that the good man
himself is the dupe of nine-tenths of these persons, who allow him for a
time to reckon them among his reformed gipsies. Be it as it may that
this well meaning man is or is not imposed on, certain it is, that as a
nation we are chargeable with culpable neglect towards these wild
denizens. We ‘compass sea and land to make one proselyte,’ and at home,
we suffer fellow beings to live and die among us, as unheeded and
uncared for (far more so) as ‘the beasts that perish.’”
We may illustrate this just remark of Mrs. Southey’s, and at the same
time, the occasional scenes of wild life in England, by quoting from Mr.
Crabbe’s volume the following extraordinary anecdote.
“George III. being out one day hunting, the chase lay through the skirts
of the forest. The stag had been hard run, and to escape the dogs, had
crossed the river in a deep part. The dogs could not be brought to
follow; and it became necessary, in order to come up with it, to make a
circuitous route along the banks of the river, through some thick and
troublesome underwood. The roughness of the ground, the long grass, and
frequent thickets, obliged the sportsmen to separate from each other;
each one endeavouring to make the best and speediest route he could.
Before they had reached the end of the forest, the king’s horse
manifested signs of fatigue and uneasiness, so much so, that his
Majesty resolved upon yielding the pleasures of the chase to those of
compassion for his horse. With this view he turned down the first avenue
of the forest, and determined on riding quietly to the oaks, there to
wait for some of his attendants. The king had only proceeded a few
yards, when, instead of the cry of the hounds he fancied he heard the
cry of human distress. As he rode forward, he heard it more
distinctly:--‘Oh, my mother! my mother! God pity and bless my poor
mother!’ The curiosity and kindness of the sovereign led him instantly
to the spot. It was a little green plot on one side of the forest, where
was spread on the grass, under a branching oak, a little pallet, half
covered with a kind of tent; and a basket or two with some packs, lay on
the ground at a few paces distant from the tent. Near to the root of the
tree he observed a little swarthy girl about eight years of age, on her
knees praying, while her little black eyes ran down with tears. Distress
of any kind was always relieved by his Majesty, for he had a heart which
melted at human woe. ‘What my child, is the cause of your weeping?’ he
asked, ‘For what do you pray?’ The little creature at first started,
then rose from her knees; and pointing to the tent, said,--‘Oh sir, my
dying mother!’ ‘What?’ said his Majesty, dismounting, and fastening his
horse up to the branches of the oak, ‘what, my child? tell me all about
it.’ The little creature now led the king to the tent; where lay, partly
covered, a middle-aged female gipsy in the last stages of a decline, and
in the last moments of life. She turned her dying eyes expressively to
the royal visiter, then looked up to heaven, but not a word did she
utter; the organs of speech had ceased their office; _the silver cord
was loosed, and the wheel broken at the cistern_. The little girl then
wept aloud, and stooping down, wiped the dying sweat from her mother’s
face. The king, much affected, asked the child her name, and of her
family, and how long her mother had been ill. Just at that moment
another gipsy girl, much older, came out of breath to the spot. She had
been to the town of W------, and brought some medicine for her dying
mother. Observing a stranger, she curtsied modestly, and hastening to
her mother, knelt down by her side, kissed her pallid lips, and burst
into tears. ‘What, my dear child,’ said his Majesty, ‘can be done for
you?’ ‘O sir,’ she replied, ‘my dying mother wanted a religious person
to teach her, and to pray with her before she died. I ran all the way
before it was light this morning to W------, and asked for a minister,
_but no one could I get to come with me to pray with my dear mother_!’
The dying woman seemed sensible of what her daughter was saying, and her
countenance was much agitated. The air was again rent with the cries of
the distressed daughters. The king, full of kindness, instantly
endeavoured to comfort them. He said, ‘I am a minister, and God has sent
me to instruct and comfort your mother.’ He then sate down on a pack by
the side of the pallet, and taking the hand of the dying gipsy,
discoursed on the demerit of sin, and the nature of redemption. He then
pointed her to Christ, the all-sufficient Saviour. While doing this, the
poor creature seemed to gather consolation and hope: her eyes sparkled
with brightness, and her countenance became animated. She looked up--she
smiled; but it was the last smile; it was the glimmering of expiring
nature. As the expression of peace, however, remained strong in her
countenance, it was not till some time had elapsed, that they perceived
the struggling spirit had left mortality.
“It was at this moment that some of his Majesty’s attendants, who had
missed him at the chase, and had been riding through the forest in
search of him, rode up, and found him comforting the afflicted gipsies.
It was an affecting sight, and worthy of everlasting record in the
annals of kings.
“He now rose up, put some gold into the hands of the afflicted girls,
promised them his protection, and bade them look to heaven. He then
wiped the tears from his eyes, and mounted his horse. His attendants,
greatly affected, stood in silent admiration. Lord L------ was going to
speak, but his Majesty, turning to the gipsies, and pointing to the
breathless corpse, and to the weeping girls, said, with strong
emotion,--‘Who, my lord, who, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto these?’”
GIPSIES OF FASHION.
An incident which occurred to me in the summer of 1837, shewed me most
strikingly how next to impossible it is for the peculiar manner and
costume of the English gipsies to be personated. In an evening drive on
the 27th of July, with a young friend staying with us, as we passed
through, or by, the little rustic hamlet of Stoke D’Abernon, for it
consists of houses scattered along one side of the road, I was struck
with two singular female figures at a little distance before us. They
were both young--the one about the middle size, the other rather taller.
The taller one was dressed in a dark cotton bedgown, dark petticoat,
grey stockings, and shoes; on her head was tied a yellow silk
handkerchief, and in her hand she held, as a walking-staff, a long stout
hazel wand, recently cut from the hedge. The other had on also a short
bedgown, but of a pink colour, striped and figured with white, a dark
petticoat, and ankle-boots. On her head she wore an old straw bonnet. As
my eye caught them at a distance,--the one standing with her tall stick
by a pool on one side of the way, the other in the act of begging from,
or addressing, a gentleman who was sitting on a stile, I could not help
exclaiming,--“What have we got here!--Maria de Moulins and Madge
Wildfire?” As we drew near, they came running up to us, and, one on each
side of the pony-chaise, began begging most importunately: “Will you
give us sixpence? Do give us sixpence! Do, dear gentleman, give us
sixpence! Dear lady, do tell the gentleman to give us sixpence!” It was
only necessary to give a slight glance at the faces of these beggars,
and to hear one tone of their voices, to know that it was a frolic--that
they were _ladies_ of education and family, from some of the
neighbouring country houses, thus dressed up. They had hair and eyes jet
black as any gipsies; and after all that has been said of the beauty of
some of the gipsy women--and they have a great deal--were handsomer than
any gipsies I ever saw. The taller, who appeared the younger of the two,
was a very lovely woman, of a slender figure, the exquisite symmetry of
which was not to be disguised by the rustic dress she had assumed. The
other had, or affected, a slight lisp. Irresistible as such beggars
might appear, I resolved to refuse them, in order to see how they would
keep up the attempt, and how they would take a refusal. I therefore
said, laughing, “O! I have no sixpences for beggars like you; you
certainly are very charming beggars; you have chosen a very rustic
costume; you act your part very well indeed, and I hope you will enjoy
your frolic.” All this time I kept driving on at a good pace; but the
resolute damsels still ran on, importuning for a sixpence. One soon
dropped behind--the taller one still ran on with her stick in her hand,
in a voice of much softness and sweetness still begging for sixpence--as
they were poor strangers, and had got nothing all day! As she ran, this
sort of badinage passed:--“Where do you come from?” “O, we have come all
the way from Epsom to meet our young man here, and he has deceived
us.”--“Well, I hope no young man will deceive you more cruelly.” “Dear
gentleman, if you won’t give us sixpence, give us a penny then to buy us
a glass of ale!” “O, you are no ale drinkers--what should you think of a
glass of gin?” “I should like something, for I am _very_ tired: and what
is sixpence to you?--you have a very good horse in your chaise; I have
no doubt you are a gentleman of independent fortune--_do_ give us
sixpence!” “No, I wish I were half as rich as you are.” Here the Queen
of Love and Beauty stopped, and turned round with an air of very
beautiful disdain. As she went back to join her companion, we were again
struck with the grace of her form, and the buoyancy of her carriage.
My impression was that these ladies were merely acting beggars; but we
soon found that they were acting gipsies; for they offered to tell
almost every body’s fortunes, and actually did tell some. As we
returned, we met them coming up a hollow woody lane, near Bookham
Common, about a mile from where we left them; and behold! they and the
gentleman who was there sitting on the stile--a military-looking man
with light mustachios--were walking familiarly on together. It was
evident that they had found “their young man!” It was a group worthy of
the pencil of Stothard; and on the opposite side of the lane, from a
cottage above it, out were come a countrywoman, and six or seven
children, of different ages, in their rustic costume, and stood to look
at them--a little picture after the very heart of Collins. The moment
our actresses saw us, they motioned their escort to move off to the
other side of the way, and to walk on, as though he did not belong to
them, and again renewed their importunity as we passed. I merely smiled,
and moved my hat to them. As we proceeded, I stopped and asked of all
the country people I met--who was that gentleman? and who the ladies
dressed as beggars? The miller thought the gentleman was from Bookham
Lodge, the seat of Captain Blackwood--he heard a large party of gentry
was just come there; “but the women, sir, they are Dutch women!” Dutch
women! Broom-girls, in fact! Broom-girls, with legs and arms like young
elephants! and broad solid figures, as if cut out of blocks of wood--how
very like those slim and elegant creatures! But it was enough for the
worthy miller, whose fortune they _had_ offered to tell, that they had
on short bedgowns and dark petticoats. A grocer from Epsom, with his
spring-cart, going as they do all round the country, from one
gentleman’s house to another, had had his fortune told by them, and was
lost in amaze at the announcement that he had had nine children, six of
whom were still living--five girls and one boy; the very facts to a
hair! A farmer and his wife at Stoke, never dreamt that the gentleman
whom they had noticed belonged to these “young baggages of beggars,”
that had been sitting on the bank by the road-side opposite their house;
but his wife said one of them was the handsomest beggar she _ever_ saw.
“Ay, they were both good-looking,” said the man, “and had famous things
on.” The groom at the parsonage-gate “didn’t know the gentleman in the
mustachios; but the women, bless you, they were no _ladies_.” “Why?” “O,
they carried it on too far for ladies here, I assure you.” “What did
they do?” “O! they came ringing at the bell like new ’uns; six or seven
times they called us out--they would take no nay.”
Little did these fair _ladies_, when sallying out for this frolic in the
sylvan lanes of Surrey, dream, I dare say, that they should meet “a
chiel takin’ notes,” that would put their exploits into print. Here they
are, however; and if they should chance to see this, I must tell them,
that they were very sweet nondescripts, but not very perfect beggars;
and far, far indeed, from perfect Zinganies. For Madge Wildfires, they
were not amiss; but beggars, impudent as they are, seldom ask for
sixpences; seldom appear in new apparel; never run by the side of
carriages--that is left to beggar children. Pleading looks, and a
pitiful whining tone, with low genuflections, mark the young
beggar-woman, as she stands fixed at one place;--her husband is dead,
and she is going home to her parents or parish; or he is gone for a
soldier, and she is following to the garrison. Lancashire witches they
would have done for capitally--but then witches don’t tell fortunes by
palmistry; their vocation is by spell and cauldron; and as for gipsies,
why it is just as difficult to mistake the particular expression and
cultivated voice of an English lady, as it is the features and voice of
the real gipsy-woman. Black eyes and black hair these ladies had; but
they had neither the olive skin, nor the bold, easy _degagée_ air of the
gipsy belle; and what do gipsies with such beautifully _slender_ and
delicate hands? They were importunate; but nothing but a life and an
education in the gipsy-camp, and perhaps the blood and descent of the
gipsy, can give the peculiar style of palaver--the _suaviter in
modo_--the unique flattery--the “you are born fortunate, sir”--with
which the gipsy accosts you. And the costume! The gipsy wears nothing
short. She has a long gown,--a long red cloak--a handkerchief tied over
her head, it is true, but upon _it_ a large flapping bonnet with lace
trimming, or black beaver hat;--instead of that fairy form, she is
generally strapping, tall, and strong--and instead of those taper ankles
and small feet, which could evidently dance down the four-and-twenty
hours, she has her lower limbs arrayed in black stockings and stout
shoes that would do for a wagoner. Young gipsy women walk with sticks!
how rarely do you see an old one with one? Knowing now who these ladies
were, I should, beforehand, have expected a closer personation of the
gipsy; but the result only proves the difficulty of the attempt. It
must, however be confessed, that this was as pretty a little rural
adventure as one could desire to meet with.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
NOOKS OF THE WORLD;
OR, A PEEP INTO THE BACK SETTLEMENTS OF ENGLAND.
There are thousands of places in this beautiful kingdom, which if you
could change their situation--if you could take some plain, monotonous,
and uninteresting tracts from the neighbourhood of large cities, from
positions barren and of daily observance, and place these in their
stead--would acquire an incalculable value; while the common spots would
serve the present inhabitants of those sweet places just as well, and
often far better, for the ordinary purposes of their lives--for walking
over in the day, sleeping in during the night, and raising grass,
cattle, and corn upon. The dwellers of cities--the men who have made
fortunes, or are making them, and yet long for the quietness and beauty
of the country--but especially the literary, the nature-loving, the
poetical--would, to use a common expression, jump at them; and, if it
were in their power to secure them, would make heavens-upon-earth of
them. Yes! they are such spots as thousands are longing for; as the
day-dreaming young, and the world-weary old, are yearning after, and
painting to their mind’s eye, daily in great cities; and the dull, the
common-place, the unpercipient of their beauty and their glory, are
dwelling in them;--paradisiacal fields and magnificent mountains; or
cloudy hollows in their mottled sides; or little _cleuchs_ and glens,
hidden and green--overhung with wild wood--rocky, and resounding with
dashing and splashing streams;--places, where the eye sees the distant
flocks and their slowly-stalking shepherds--the climbing goat, the
soaring eagle: and the ear catches their far-off cries; whence a
thousand splendours and pageants, changing aspects, and kindling and
dying glories, in earth and sky, are witnessed; the cheerful arising of
morning--the still, crimson, violet, purple, azure, dim grey, and then
dark fading away of day into night, are watched; where the high and
clear grandeur and solitude of night, with its moon and stars, and
wandering breezes, and soul-enwrapping freshness, are seen and felt.
Such places as these, and the brown or summer-empurpled heath, with its
patch of ancient forest; its blasted, shattered, yet living old trees,
greeting you with feelings and fancies of long-past centuries; the
clear, rushing brook; the bubbling and most crystalline spring; and the
turf that springs under your feet with a delicious elasticity, and sends
up to your senses a fresh and forest-born odour; or cottages perched in
the sides of glades, or on eminences by the sea--the soul-inspiring
sea--with its wide views of coming and going ships, its fresh gales, and
its everlasting change of light and life, on its waters, and on its
shores; its sailors, and its fishermen, with all their doings, families,
and dependencies--every one of them thoroughly covered and saturated
with the spirit of picturesque and homely beauty; or inland hollows and
fields, and old hamlets, lying amid great woods and slopes of wondrous
loveliness;--if we could but turn things round, and bring these near us,
and unite, at once, city advantages, city society, and them! But it
never can be! And there are living in them, from generation to
generation, numbers of people who are not to be envied, because they
know nothing at all of the enviableness of their situation.
We are continually labouring to improve society--to diffuse
education--to confer higher and ampler religious knowledge; but these
people know little of all this--experience little of its effect; for
their abodes, and natural paradises, lie far from the great tracks of
travel and commerce; far from our great roads; in the most
out-of-the-world places--the very nooks of the world.
If you come by chance upon them, you are struck with their admirable
beauty, their solemn repose, their fresh and basking solitude. You
cannot help exclaiming, What happy people must these be! But, when you
come to look closer into them, the delusion vanishes. They do not, in
fact, see any beauty that you see. Their minds have never been stirred
from the sluggish routine of their daily life; their mental eye has
never been unsealed, and directed to survey the advantages of their
situation. They have been occupied with other things. Like the farmer’s
lad mentioned by Wordsworth, their souls have become encrusted in their
own torpor.
A sample should I give
Of what this stock produces, to enrich
The tender age of life, ye would exclaim,
“Is this the whistling plough-boy whose shrill notes
Impart new gladness to the morning air?”
Forgive me, if I venture to suspect
That many, sweet to hear of in soft verse,
Are of no finer frame;--his joints are stiff;
Beneath a cumbrous frock that to the knees
Invests the thriving churl, his legs appear,
Fellows to those that lustily upheld
The wooden-stools, for everlasting use,
Whereon our fathers sate. And mark his brow!
Under whose shaggy canopy are set
Two eyes, not dim, but of a healthy stare;
Wide, sluggish, blank, and ignorant and strange;
Proclaiming boldly that they never drew
A look or motion of intelligence,
From infant conning of the Christ-cross-row,
Or puzzling through a Primer, line by line,
Till perfect mastery crown the pains at last.
_The Excursion_, B. 8.
This, however, is one of the worst specimens of the most stupified
class--farm-servants. Wordsworth himself makes his good and wise
_Wanderer_, a shepherd in his youth, and describes him, when a lad, as
impressed with the deepest sense of nature’s majesty. He represents him,
in one of the noblest passages of the language, as witnessing the sun
rise from some bold headland, and
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise.
And, indeed, the mountaineer must be generally excepted from that
torpor of mind I have alluded to. The forms of nature that perpetually
surround him, are so bold and sublime, that they almost irresistibly
impress, excite, and colour his spirit within him; and those legends and
stirring histories which generally abound in them, co-operate with these
natural influences. This unawakened intellect dwells more generally amid
the humbler and quieter forms of natural beauty; in the “sleepy hollows”
of more champaign regions.
It might be supposed that these nooks of the world would, in their
seclusion, possess very much one moral character; but nothing can be
more untrue. Universally, they may seem old-fashioned, and full of a
sweet tranquillity; but their inhabitants differ widely in character in
different parts of the country--widely often in a short space, and in a
manner that can only be accounted for by their less or greater communion
with towns, less or greater degree of education extended to them--and
the kind extended. Where they are far from towns, and hold little
intercourse with them, and have no manufactory in them, they may be
dull, but they are seldom very vicious. If they have had little
education, they lead a very mechanical sort of life; are often very
boorish, and have very confined notions and contracted wishes; are rude
in manner, but not bad in heart. I have been in places--ay, in this
newspaper-reading age, where a newspaper never comes; where they have no
public-house, no school, no church, and no doctor; and yet the district
has been populous. But, in similarly situated places, where yet they had
a simple, pious pastor--some primitive patriarch, like the venerable
Robert Walker, of whom so admirable an account is given by Wordsworth;
where they have been blest with such a man amongst them, and where they
have had a school; where they knew little of what was going on in the
world, and where yet you were sure to find, in some crypt-like hole in
the wall, or in a little fireside window, about half a dozen books--the
Bible, “Hervey’s Meditations among the Tombs,” “Baxter’s Saint’s
Everlasting Rest,” “Romaine’s Life of Faith,” or his “Drop of Honey from
the Rock Christ,” “Macgowan’s Life of Christ,” or “Drelincourt on
Death,” and such like volumes; or “Robinson Crusoe,” “Philip Quarle,”
“The History of Henry the Earl of Moreland,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” or
“Pamela;”--have you found a simplicity of heart and manner, a quiet
prosperity, a nearer approach to the Arcadian idea of rural life, than
anywhere else in this country. There are yet such places to be found in
our island, notwithstanding the awful truth of what was said by
Coleridge, that “Care, like a foul hag, sits on us all; one class
presses with iron foot upon the wounded heads beneath, and all struggle
for a worthless supremacy, and all, to rise to it, move shackled by
their expenses.”
But these are now few and far between; and they are certainly “nooks of
the world,” far from manufacturing towns; for my experience coincides
with that of Captain Lloyd, as given in his “Field Sports of the
North:”--“Manufactures, of whatever nature they may be, may certainly
tend to enrich individuals, but, to my mind, they add little to the
happiness of the community at large. In what parts of any country in the
world, are such scenes of vice and squalid misery to be witnessed, as in
manufacturing districts?” What he adds is very true--that, though it may
appear singular, yet it is a fact, that the farther we retreat from
great towns and manufactories, a greater degree of comfort is generally
to be observed amongst the peasantry. It is, indeed, a strange relief to
the spirit of one who has known something of the eager striving of the
world, to come upon a spot where the inhabitants are passing through
life, as it were, in a dreamlike pilgrimage, half unconscious of its
trials and evils--an existence which, if it have not the merit of great
and triumphant virtue, has that absence of selfish cunning, pride,
sorrow, and degradation, which one would seek for in vain amid more
bustling scenes. To find the young, soberly and cheerfully fulfilling
their daily duties--nowhere affluence, but everywhere plenty and comfort
observable--and the old, in their last tranquil days, seated in their
easy chairs, or on the stone bench at their doors, glad to chat with you
on all they have known on earth and hoped for in heaven--why, it would
be more easy to scathe such a place with the evil spirit of the town,
than to raise it in the scale of moral life. The experiment of
improvement there, you feel, would be a hazardous one. It were easy and
desirable to give more knowledge: but not easy to give it unaccompanied
by those blighting contaminations that at present cling to it.
It is in those rural districts into which manufactories have
spread--that are partly manufacturing and partly agricultural--that the
population assumes its worst shape. The state of morals and manners
amongst the working population of our great towns is terrible--far more
so than casual observers are aware of. After all that has been done to
reform and educate the working class, the torrent of corruption rolls
on. The most active friends of education, the most active labourers in
it, are ready to despair, and sometimes exclaim,--“What have we done,
after all!” There, the spirit of man is aroused to a marvellous
activity; but it is an unhealthful activity, and overpowers, in its
extravagance, all attempts to direct it aright. “Evil communications
corrupt good manners” faster than good communications can counteract
them; and where the rural population, in its simplicity, comes in
contact with this spirit, it receives the contagion in its most
exaggerated form--a desolating moral pestilence; and suffers in person
and in mind. There, spread all the vice and baseness of the lowest grade
of the town, made hideous by still greater vulgarity and ignorance, and
unawed by the higher authorities, unchecked by the better influences
which there prevail, in the example and exertions of a higher caste of
society.
The Methodists have done much to check the progress of demoralization in
these districts. They have given vast numbers education; they have taken
them away from the pot-house and the gambling-house; from low haunts and
low pursuits. They have placed them in a certain circle, and invested
them with a degree of moral and social importance. They have placed them
where they have a character to sustain, and higher objects to strive
after; where they have ceased to be operated upon by a perpetual series
of evil influences, and have been brought under the regular operation of
good ones. They have rescued them from brutality of mind and manners,
and given them a more refined association on earth, and a warm hope of a
still better existence hereafter. If they have not done all that could
be desired, with such materials, they have done much, and the country
owes them much. The thorough mastery of the evil requires the
application of yet greater power--it requires a NATIONAL POWER. The evil
lies deeper than the surface; it lies in the distorted nature of our
social relations; and, _before the population can be effectually
reformed, its condition must be physically ameliorated_!
There never was a more momentous and sure truth pronounced, than that
pronounced by Christ,--“They who take the sword, shall fall by the
sword.” If they do not fall by its edge, they will by its hilt. It is
under this evil that we are now labouring. As a nation we have fallen,
through war, into all our present misery and crime. It is impossible
that the great European kingdoms, with their present wealth and
cultivated surfaces, in their present artificial state of society, can
carry on war without enduring evils far more extensive, tremendous, and
lasting, than the mere ravaging of lands, the destruction of towns, or
even of human lives. We are, as a nation, an awful proof of this at this
moment. By the chances of war, at one time manufacturing and farming
almost for the world; prospering, apparently, on the miseries of whole
kingdoms wrapt in one wide scene of promiscuous carnage and anarchy, our
tradesmen and agriculturists commanded their own terms; and hence, on
the one hand, they accumulated large fortunes, while, on the other, the
nation, by its enormous military preparations--its fleets and armies
marching and sailing everywhere, prepared to meet emergencies at all
points and in all climes; by its aids and subsidies abroad; by its
wasteful expenditure at home--piled up the most astounding debt ever
heard of in the annals of the world. A vast working population was not
merely demanded by this unnatural state of excitement, but might be said
to be forced into existence, to supply all manner of articles to realms
too busy in mutual slaughter to be able to manufacture or plough for
themselves. Every thing assumed a new and wonderful value. All classes,
the working classes as well as the rest, with the apparent growing
prosperity, advanced into habits of higher refinement and luxury. The
tables of mechanics were heaped with loads of viands of the best
quality, and of the highest price, as earliest in the market; their
houses were crowded with furniture, till they themselves could scarcely
turn round in them--clocks, sometimes two or three in one house; chests
of drawers and tables thronged into the smallest rooms; looking-glasses,
tea-trays, and prints, stuck on every possible space on the walls; and,
from the ceiling depending hams, bags, baskets, fly-cages of many
colours, and a miscellaneous congregation of other articles, that gave
their abodes more the aspect of warerooms or museums, than the
dwellings of the working class. Dress advanced in the same ratio; horses
and gigs were in vast request; and the publicans and keepers of
tea-gardens made ample fortunes.
The war ceased. Commerce was thrown open to the competition of the
world. The continental nations began to breathe, and to look round on
their condition. Their poverty and their spirit of emulation, the sight
of their own stripped condition, and of England apparently enriched
beyond calculation at their expense, set them rapidly about helping
themselves. This could not but be quickly and deeply felt here. To
maintain our position, all manner of artificial means were adopted.
Every class, feeling the tide of wealth changing its course, strove to
keep what it had got. The working class, as individually the weakest,
because they had spent their gains as they came, went to the ground. The
value of every necessary of life was kept up as much as possible by
legal enactments. The rate of wages fell. The manufacturers, impelled by
the same necessity of struggling for the maintenance of their rank, were
plunged into the most eager competition; the utmost pressure of
reduction fell on the labour of the operatives, who, with their acquired
habits, were ill able to bear it. They were thrust down to a condition
the most pitiful and morally destructive--to excessive labour, to
semi-starvation, to pauperism. They could not send their children to
school--not so much from the expense of schooling--for that was made
light by public contribution, and new plans of facility in teaching
large numbers--but because they wanted every penny their children could
earn, by any means, to aid in the common support. Hence, mere infants
were crowded in pestilent mills when they should have been growing in
the fresh air, and were stunted and blighted in body and in mind--a
system, the evil of which became so enormous as to call loudly upon the
attention of the legislature, and the indignant wonder of the nation.
The parents themselves had not a moment’s time to watch over their
welfare or their morals; at least sixteen hours’ unremitting daily
labour being necessary to the most miserable existence. Evils
accumulated on all sides. The working class considered themselves cast
off from the sympathies of the upper classes, regarded and valued but as
tools and machines; their children grew into ignorant depravity, in
spite of all efforts of law or philanthropy to prevent them. These
causes still operate wherever manufacturing extends: and till the
condition of this great class, whether in towns or villages, can be
amended; till time for domestic relaxation can be given to the man, and
a Christian, rather than a literary, education to the boy--an
inculcation of the beauty and necessity of the great Christian
principles; the necessity of reverencing the laws of God; doing, in all
their intercourse with their fellow men, as they would be done by; the
necessity of purity of life and justice of action, rather than the cant
of religious feeling, and the blind mystery of sectarian doctrine,--the
law and the philanthropy must be in vain.
To the simple, and yet uncontaminated parts of the country, there is yet
a different kind of education that I should rejoice to see extended. It
should be, to open the eyes of the rural population to the advantages of
their situation;--to awaken a taste for the enjoyment of nature;--to
give them a touch of the poetical;--to teach them to see the
pleasantness of their quiet lives,--of their cottages and gardens,--of
the freshness of the air and country around them, especially as
contrasted with the poor and squalid alleys where those of their own
rank, living in towns, necessarily take up their abode,--of the
advantages in point of health and purity afforded to their children by
their position,--of the majestic beauty of the day, with its morning
animation, its evening sunsets, and twilights almost as beautiful; its
nightly blue altitude, with its moon and stars:--all this might be
readily done by the conversation of intelligent people, and by the
diffusion of cheap publications amongst them; and done, too, without
diminishing the relish for the daily business of their lives. Airy and
dreamy notions--notions of false refinement, and aspirations of soaring
beyond their own sphere--are not inspired by sound and good
intelligence, but by defective and bad education.
The sort of education I mean has long been realized in Scotland, and
with the happiest results. There, large towns and manufactories have
produced their legitimate effect, as with us; but, in the rural
districts, every child, by national provision, has a sound, plain
education given him. He is brought up in habits of economy, and
sentiments of rational religion, and the most solemn and thorough
morality. The consequence is, that almost all grow up with a sense of
self-respect; a sense of the dignity of human nature; a determined
resolve of depending on their own exertions: and though no people are so
national, because they are made sensible of the beauty of their country
and the honourable deeds of their forefathers, yet, if they cannot find
means of living at home without degradation, and, indeed, without
bettering their condition, they soberly march off, and find some place
where they can, though it be at the very ends of the earth.
Nothing is better known than the intelligence and order that distinguish
a great portion of the rural population of Scotland. No people are more
diligent and persevering in their proper avocations; and yet none are
more alive to the delights of literature. Amid wild mountain tracks and
vast heaths, where you scarcely see a house as you pass along for miles,
and where you could not have passed two generations ago without danger
of robbery or the dirk, they have book societies, and send new books to
and fro to one another, with an alacrity and punctuality that are most
delightful. When I have been pedestrianizing in that country, I have
frequently accosted men at their work, or in their working
dress--perhaps with their axe or their spade in their hands, and three
or four children at their heels--and found them well acquainted with the
latest good publications, and entertaining the soundest notions of them,
without the aid of critics. Such men in England would probably not have
been able to read at all. They would have known nothing but the routine
of their business, the state of the crop, and the gossip of the
neighbourhood: but there, sturdy and laborious men, tanned with the sun,
or smeared with the marl in which they had been delving, have not only
been able to give all the knowledge of the district; its histories and
traditions; the proprietorships, and other particulars of the
neighbourhood; but their eyes have brightened at the mention of their
great patriots, reformers, and philosophers, and their tongues have
grown perfectly eloquent in discussing the works of their poets and
other writers. The names of Wallace, Bruce, Knox, Fletcher of Saltoun,
the Covenanters, Scott, Burns, Hogg, Campbell, Wilson, and others, have
been spells that have made them march away miles with me, when they
could not get me into their own houses, and find it difficult to turn
back.
Now, why should not this be so in England? Why should not similar means
produce similar effects? They must and would; and by imbuing the rural
population with a spirit as sound and rational, we should not only raise
it in the social scale to a degree of worth and happiness at present not
easily imaginable, but render the most important service to the country,
by attaching “a bold peasantry, the country’s pride,” to their native
soil, by the most powerful of ties, and rendering them both able and
more determined to live in honourable dependence on self-exertion. BOOK
SOCIETIES, under local management, should do for the COUNTRY what
MECHANICS’ LIBRARIES are doing for the TOWNS--building up those habits,
and perfecting those healthful tastes, for which popular education is
but the bare foundation.
Wordsworth gives an account of the early years of his Wanderer, which,
under such a system, might be that of thousands.
Early had he learned
To reverence the volume that displays
The mystery, the life which cannot die:--
What wonder if his being thus became
Sublime and comprehensive! Low desires,
Low thoughts, there had no place; yet was his heart
Lowly; for he was meek in gratitude,
Oft as he called those ecstasies to mind,
And whence they flowed; and from them he acquired
Wisdom, which works through patience:--hence he learned
In oft-recurring hours of sober thought
To look on nature with a humble heart,
Self-questioned, where it did not understand,
And with a superstitious eye of love.
So passed the time; yet to the nearest town
He duly went, with what small overplus
His earnings might supply, and brought away
The book that most had tempted his desires,
While at the stall he read. Among the hills
He gazed upon that mighty orb of song,
The divine Milton. Lore of different kind,
The annual savings of a toilsome life,
His schoolmaster supplied; books that explain
The purer elements of truth, involved,
In lines and numbers, and, by charm severe,
(Especially perceived where nature droops,
And feeling is suppressed) preserve the mind
Busy in solitude and poverty.
Yet still uppermost,
Nature was at his heart, as if he felt,
Though yet he knew not how, a wasting power
In all things that from her sweet influence
Might tend to wean him. Therefore, with her hues,
Her forms, and with the spirit of her forms,
He clothed the nakedness of austere truth,
While yet he lingered in the rudiments
Of science, and among her simplest laws,
His triangles--they were the stars of heaven,
The silent stars! Oft did he take delight
To measure th’ altitude of some tall crag
That is the eagle’s birthplace, or some peak
Familiar with forgotten years.----
In dreams, in study, and in ardent thought,
Thus was he reared; much wanting to assist
The growth of intellect, yet gaining more,
And every moral feeling of his soul
Strengthened and braced, by breathing in content
The keen, the wholesome air of poverty,
And drinking from the well of homely life.
_The Excursion_, B. 1.
Such a process I should rejoice to see producing such characters in
England. Yes! Milton, Thomson, Cowper, the pious and tender Montgomery,
and Bloomfield, one of their own kind, would be noble and enriching
studies for the simplest cottage, and cottage-garden, and field-walk.
Some of our condensed historians, our best essayists and divines,
travellers, naturalists in a popular shape, and writers of fiction, as
Scott, and Edgeworth, and De Foe, might be with vast advantage diffused
amongst them. Let us hope it will one day be so. And already I know some
who have reaped those blessings of an awakened heart and intellect, too
long denied to the hard path of poverty, and which render them not the
less sedate, industrious, and provident, but, on the contrary, more so.
They have made them, in the humblest of stations, the happiest of men;
quickened their sensibilities towards their wives and children;
converted the fields, the places of their daily toil, into places of
earnest meditative delight--schools of perpetual observation of God’s
creative energy and wisdom.
It was but the other day that the farming-man of a neighbouring lady
having been pointed out to me as at once remarkably fond of reading and
attached to his profession, I entered into conversation with him; and
it is long since I experienced such a cordial pleasure as in the
contemplation of the character that opened upon me. He was a strong man;
not to be distinguished by his dress and appearance from those of his
class, but having a very intelligent countenance; and the vigorous,
healthful feelings, and right views, that seemed to fill not only his
mind but his whole frame, spoke volumes for that vast enjoyment and
elevation of character which a rightly directed taste for reading would
diffuse amongst our peasantry. His sound appreciation of those authors
he had read--some of our best poets, historians, essayists, and
travellers--was truly cheering, when contrasted with the miserable and
frippery taste which distinguishes a large class of readers; where
a-thousand-times-repeated novels of fashionable life, neither original
in conception nor of any worth in their object--the languid offspring of
a tinsel and exotic existence--are read because they can be read without
the labour of thinking. While such works are poured in legions upon the
public, like a host of dead leaves from the forest, driven along in
mimic life by a mighty wind--and while such things are suffered to swell
the Puffiads of publishers, and shoulder away, or discourage, the
substantial labours of high intellect--it is truly reviving to see the
awakening of mind in the common people. It is, I am persuaded, from the
people that a regenerating power must come--a new infusion of better
blood into our literary system. The inanities of fashion must weary the
spirit of a great nation, and be thrown off; strong, native genius, from
the measureless, unploughed regions of the popular mind--robust,
gigantic, uneffeminated by luxury, glitter, and sloth--will rise up, and
put all soulless artificialities to shame; and already mighty are the
symptoms of such a change manifested, in an array of names that might be
adduced. But I must not be led farther away by this seducing topic.
I found this countryman was a member of our Artisans’ Library, and every
Saturday evening he walked over to the town to exchange his books. I
asked him whether reading did not make him less satisfied with his daily
work; his answer deserves universal attention:--“Before he read, his
work was weary to him; for, in the solitary fields, an empty head
measured the time out tediously, to double its length; but, now, no
place was so sweet as the solitary fields: he had always something
pleasant floating across his mind; and the labour was delightful, and
the day only too short.” Seeing his ardent attachment to the country, I
sent him the last edition of “The Book of the Seasons;” and I must here
give a _verbatim et literatim_ extract from the note in which he
acknowledged its receipt, because it not only contains an experimental
proof of the falsity of a common alarm on the subject of popular
education, but shews at what a little cost much happiness may be
conveyed to a poor man:--“Believe me, dear sir, this kind act has made
an impression on my heart that time will not easily erase. There are
none of your works, in my opinion, more valuable than this. The study of
nature is not only the most delightful, but the most elevating. This
will be true in _every station_ of life. But how much more ought the
_poor man_ to prize this study! which if prized and pursued as it ought,
will enable him to bear, with patient resignation and cheerfulness, the
_lot_ by providence assigned him. O sir! I pity the working man who
possesses not a _taste_ for reading. ’Tis true, it may sometimes lead
him to neglect the other more important duties of his station; but his
better and more enlightened judgment will soon correct itself in this
particular, and will enable him, while he steadily and diligently
pursues his private studies, and participates in intellectual enjoyment,
to prize, as he ought, his _character as a man_ in every relative duty
of life.”
What a nation would this be, filled with a peasantry holding such views,
and possessing such a consequent character as this!
The sources of enjoyment in nature have been too long closed to the
poor. The rich can wander from side to side of the island, and explore
its coasts, its fields, and forests--but the poor man is fettered to the
spot. The rich can enter the galleries and exhibitions of cities, and
contemplate all the great works of art; the poor _ought to be taught to
know_ that, if they cannot see the works of art--statues and
paintings--they can see those of God;--if they cannot gaze on the finest
forms of beauty from the chisel of the sculptor, they may be taught to
distinguish the beauty of all _living_ forms;--if they cannot behold
splendid paintings of landscapes, of mountains, of sea-coasts, of
sunrises and sunsets; they can see, one or other of them, all the
originals of these--originals to whose magnificence and glory the copies
never can approach. To the poor, but properly educated man, every walk
will become a luxury, a poem, a painting--a source of the sweetest
feelings and the most elevating reflections.
But there is one class in these back settlements of England to whom a
liberal education is most requisite, and to whom it would be most
difficult to give it--the class of smaller resident proprietors. The
effect of the possession of property in such places is singular and most
lamentable. It produces the most impenetrable hardness of nature--the
most selfish and sordid dispositions. Everywhere, the tendency of
accumulation is to generate selfishness: but, in towns, there are many
counteracting influences; the emulative desire of vying, in mode of
life, with equals and superiors--the greater spread of information--the
various objects of pleasure and association, which keep open the avenues
of expenditure, not only in the purse, but in the heart. Here there are
none. Amusements and dissipations are self-gratulatingly denounced as
gross follies and sins; objects of display, as pride. The consequence
is, that habits of the strangest parsimony prevail--the rudest
furniture, the rudest style of living. Men who, in a town or its
neighbourhood, would appear as gentlemen, and, perhaps, keep a carriage,
there wear often clouted shoes, threadbare and patched clothes, and a
hat not worth a farthing; and all in a fashion of the most awkward
rusticity. All wisdom is supposed to lie in penuriousness. They have
abundance of maxims for ever in their mouths, full of that philosophy;
as “Penny-wise and pound-foolish”--“A penny saved is a penny got”--“A
pin a-day’s a groat a-year.” All ideas seem absorbed in the one grand
idea of accumulating coin, that will never be of more value to them than
so many oyster-shells. Such a thing as a noble or generous sentiment
would be a surprise to their own souls. Of such men are made the hardest
overseers of the poor; whose screwing, iron-handed administration of
relief is the boast of the parish, and has led to the most monstrous
abuses. To them all objects are alike; they have no discrimination; the
old and young, the idle and industrious, the sturdy vagabond, and the
helpless and dying!--they deem it a virtue to deny them all, till a
higher power forces the reluctant doit from their gripe. They are surly,
yet proud churls, living wrapped in a sense of their own importance; for
they see nobody above them, except there be a squire or a lord in the
parish; and they see little of him, and then only to make their passing
obsequious bow; for they are at once
Tyrants to the weak, and cowards to the strong.
Any education, any change, would be a blessing to these men, that would
bring them into collision with those of their own supposed standing, but
with better education and more liberal views and habits. The excess to
which these causes operate in some of these out-of-the-world places, is
scarcely to be credited: they produce the strangest scenes and the
strangest characters. Let us take a specimen or two from one parish,
that would be easily paralleled in many others.
In one part of this secluded neighbourhood, you approach extensive
woods, and behold amongst them a house of corresponding air and
dimensions--a mansion befitting a large landed proprietor. If you choose
to explore the outbuildings belonging to it, you will find there a
regularly educated and authorized physician, living in a dovecot, and
writing prescriptions for any that choose to employ him, for a crown, or
even half-a-crown, which he spends in drink. Paternal example and
inculcations made him what he is; unfitted him for success in his
profession, and left him dependent on his elder brother, who affords him
the asylum of his dovecot, yet so grudgingly that he has even attempted
to dislodge him by pulling off the roof; and the poor doctor owes his
retreat, not to his brother’s good-will, but to his own possession of a
brace of formidable bull-dogs, that menace the destruction of any
assailant. The dogs lie in his chamber when you enter, with their noses
on the ground, and their dark glittering eyes fixed steadily upon you,
and are ready, at a signal, to spring on you, and tear you to pieces.
The doctor’s free potations have now deprived him of the power of
locomotion; he cannot quit his pigeon-house; but one of his bull-dogs he
has trained to act as his emissary, and with a note suspended to his
neck by a tape, he goes to certain houses in the neighbouring village,
and so communicates his wishes to certain cronies of his, who are in the
habit of attending to them. The dog would tear any one to pieces that
attempted to stop him while on his master’s errands, being a very strong
and fierce creature; but, if he is not molested, he goes very civilly
along to his place of destination, and, when the note is taken off his
neck by the proper hands, returns with great punctuality and decorum.
It must be said of this curiosity of a physician, that he is the
descendant of a very curious family; whose history for the last three
generations would be a regular series of eccentricities; and the first
of whom, here resident, was a celebrated piratical captain, who is said
to have come hither disguised as a peasant, seeking as secluded a
country as he could find, and driving before him an ass loaded with
gold. It is certain that he purchased very extensive estates, and that
one of his descendants was lately in Parliament, who, partaking of the
family qualities, excited more surprise and more laughter in the house,
than, perhaps, any man since the days of Sir Thomas Lethbridge.
Not far thence, stands another residence. At some distance it appears a
goodly manor-house. It is large; with white walls and many antique
gables; a stately avenue of elms in front; tall pines about it, the
landmark of the whole country round: a spacious garden, with a
summer-house on the wall, seeming to have been built when there was some
taste there for those rural enjoyments which such a place is calculated
to afford to the amiable, country-loving, and refined. As you come near,
there appear signs of neglect and decay. Old timber, litter, and large
stones lie about; there are broken windows, unpainted and rotting
wood-work: every thing looks forlorn, as if it were the residence of
poverty on the verge of utter destitution.
The fact is, the owner has landed property worth from thirty to forty
thousand pounds. But see the man himself! There he goes, limping across
his yard, having permanently injured one of his legs in some of his
farming operations. There he goes--a tall hard-featured, weather-beaten
man, dressed in the garb of the most rustic husbandman: strong clouted
ankle-boots, blue or black ribbed worsted stockings; corduroy
small-clothes; a yellow striped waistcoat, and a coat of coarse grey
cloth, cut short, in a rude fashion, and illustrated with metal buttons;
a hat that seems to have been originally made of coarse wool or dog’s
hair--to have cost some four-and-sixpence some dozen years ago--brown,
threadbare, and cocked up behind, by propping on his coat collar.
He has brought up a family of three sons, and never spent on their
education three pounds. The consequence has been just what might be
expected. They came to know, as they grew up, “for quickly comes such
knowledge,” their expectations; and they turned out rude, savage, and
drunken. One married a servant girl, and she dying, the son brought
himself and several children to the old man’s to live. Warned by
this--for, with all his clownish parsimony, he has pride--the pride of
property--he has put the others on farms, and they have married farmer’s
daughters: but, always living in expectation of the old man’s death,
they attend to no business; always looking forward to the possession of
his wealth, they have already condemned a good part of it. If any man
could be punished that man is, for sparing the expense of their
education, and for the example set before them; for, what he has made
the sole object of all his thoughts and labours, he sees them
squandering, and knows that they will squander it all. But he himself is
not guilty of all this; he is but the victim of his own education, and
the maxims and manners of his ancestors. If he could have seen the
usefulness of education to his sons, he could not have found in his
heart to spend the necessary money; but he could not see it: anything
further than to be able to sign a receipt, and reckon a sum of money in
their heads, he called trash and nonsense.
When his sons were growing towards men, I have chanced to pass his
farm-yard, and seen him and two of them filling a manure-cart;
labouring, puffing and blowing, and perspiring, as if their lives
depended on their labour; and the old man was urging them on with
continual curses--“Curse thy body, Dick! Curse thy body, Ben!--Ben!
Dick! Ben! Dick! work, lads, work!” And these hopeful sons were repaying
their father’s curses with the same horrible earnestness.
A gentleman once told me that, having to call on this man about some
money transaction, he was detained till twelve o’clock, and desired to
stay dinner, that being his hour. Out of curiosity he consented. Every
thing about the house was in the rudest and most desolate state. I do
not know whether they had a cloth spread on the sturdy oak table, which
supported a set of pewter plates, a roasted fowl, and a pudding in a
huge brown earthen dish. The wife, stripped to her stays and quilted
petticoat, was too busy making cheese and scolding the servants to come
to dinner. The _pater familias_ and his guest sat down together. As he
cut up the fowl, the two great lads, Dick and Ben, then about twelve and
fourteen years of age, came with their wild eyes staring sharply out of
their bushy heads of wild hair, and hung over their father’s chair, one
on each side, with an eager expression of voracity; for they were not
asked to sit down. The father, as if he expected them to pounce on the
dinner and carry it off, kept a sharp look-out on them; and though, out
of deference to his guest, he restrained his curses, he kept
vociferating, as he turned first to one and then to the other, and then
gave a cut at the fowl--“Ben! Dick! get away, lads! get away! get away!
get away!” But the moment a leg and a wing were cut off, the lads made a
sudden spring, and each seizing a joint, bounded out of the apartment,
leaving the old man in wonder at the unmanageableness of his sons. From
such an education who can doubt the result?--a brood of savages, the
nuisance of the neighbourhood, and torment of the old man’s days. To
such a height has the old man’s agony arisen at times, as he saw the
wasteful conduct of his sons, that it is a pretty well established fact,
that on one occasion he threw himself down in a ditch in one of his own
fields, and--did not pray to die, for he never knew the beginning,
middle, or end of a prayer, but he _tried_ to die; but, after a long and
weary endeavour, finding it in vain, he got up and hobbled off home
again, saying--“Well, I see it is as hard to die as to live. I can’t
die! I can’t die! I must even bear it, till these lads kill me by
inches--and that must be a plaguy while first; for I measure two yards
of bad stuff, and I think I’m as hard as a nur,[5] and as tough as
whit-leather.”
[5] Nur--a hard knot of wood used by boys at bandy instead of a ball.
Ben, now upwards of forty years of age, still lives with the old man,
working as a labourer on his farm, and is maintained with his children.
Money he never sees: but his father allows him to sell bundles of straw;
and he may be seen, in an evening, with two bundles of straw under each
arm, proceeding to the alehouse in the next village, where he barters
them for the evening cup. Nay, the other night, a person encountered, as
he supposed, a thief, issuing from the old man’s yard, with a huge beam
on his shoulder. It was Ben, going to turn it into ale; who desired his
neighbour to say nothing. Nothing can more strikingly close this account
than the old man’s usual description of his three sons. “My son Dick has
Cain’s mark on his forehead; Ben, if ale was a guinea a-pint, and he had
but one guinea in the world, would buy a pint of ale; and, as for
Simon--he is a gentleman! He takes a certificate to shoot. He runs with
those long legs of his over three parishes, and comes slinging home with
a crow, or a pinet[6]--ay, ay, Simon is a gentleman!”
[6] Magpie.
In this same nook of the world might be seen, some years ago, two
brothers, stout farmers--farmers of their own property--heaping curses
and recriminations on each other about their possessions, in so loud a
voice that they have been heard half a mile off. This enmity outlasted
the elder, and burned in the breast of the younger for years after. For
it was some years after, that he attended the funeral of a niece whom he
left through life to the charity of another. When the funeral was over,
they adjourned with the parson to the public-house; and here the person
who had cared for the neglected niece, urged the uncle now to pay some
part of the funeral charges. “Yes,” said he, “thou hast been at a deal
of cost,” (these country people still retain the use of thou and thee),
“and here is sixpence for the parson’s glass of brandy and water.” The
astonished man pushed back the sixpence with contempt; but, at this
moment, in came a lad to tell them that the grave being made too near
that of the deceased brother, the earth had suddenly fallen in, and
broken in the lid of the old man’s coffin. At this, the living brother
started up in evident delight, and exclaimed--“Why, has it? Why, has it?
Thou tells me summut, lad! thou tells me summut!” And he gave him the
sixpence he had generously destined for the parson’s glass.
A scene, described to me by a professional land-agent, would seem to
belong to the generation of Parson Adams and Squire Western, but it
actually occurred but the other day, and only seven miles from one of
our largest county towns. This land-agent was sent for on business by an
old gentleman of large landed estate in that county. As the gentleman’s
house was in a secluded situation, off the highways, and it was a fine,
cool, autumnal day, he took a footpath which led the whole way across
delightful fields, and after enjoying his walk through meadows and
woods, arrived at the Hall with a most vigorous appetite, just as the
squire and his housekeeper were sitting down to dinner. Of course,
nothing less could take place than an invitation for him to join them;
which he was not in the disposition by any means to decline. I need
scarcely say that the fact of the squire and his housekeeper sitting at
the same table indicates the ancient gentleman as one of the real old
school. He was, in fact, a tall, gaunt, meagre old fellow, whose sole
pleasure was putting out his rents on good security, and whose sole
family consisted of his housekeeper and one old amphibious animal, who,
if he had as many heads as occupations, would have carried at least four
more than Janus--occupying his talents, as he did, as gardener, groom,
serving-man, and three or four other personages. The whole house and
every thing about it bore amplest marks of neglect and antiquity. Not a
gate, or a door, or a window, or a carpet, or any other piece of
furniture, but was just as his father left it fifty years before, except
for the work which time, and such tying and patching as were absolutely
needful to keep certain things together, had done. Our agent looked with
some curiosity at the two covers on the table before them, which being
removed revealed a single partridge and three potatoes. The housekeeper
having cut the partridge into quarters, gave each of the gentlemen one,
and took the third herself. Our worthy land-agent supposing this to be
but a slight first course, was astounded to hear the squire say, he
hoped Mr. Mapleton would make a dinner--for he saw what there was! On
this significant hint Mr. Mapleton made haste to dispatch his quarter of
bird, and cast eager looks on the remaining quarter in the dish. The
housekeeper, indeed, was just proceeding to extend the knife and fork
towards it, saying, perhaps Mr. Mapleton would take the other quarter,
when the old gentleman said very smartly; “Don’t urge Mr. Mapleton
unpleasantly--don’t overdo him--I dare say he knows when he has had
enough, without so much teasing. I have made an excellent dinner
indeed!”
Hereupon the housekeeper’s arms and weapons were drawn back abruptly;
the old gentleman rang the bell, and the shuffling old serving-man
entered and cleared all away. As the cloth and the housekeeper
disappeared, the squire also opened a tall cupboard on one side of the
fireplace, and Mr. Mapleton began to please his fancy with a forthcoming
apparition of wine. Having sate, however, some time, and hearing from
behind the tall door, which was drawn partly after the old squire so as
to conceal him, certain sounds as of decanting liquor, and as of a knife
coming in contact with a plate, sounds particularly familiar and
exciting to hungry ears, he contrived to lean back so far in his chair
as to catch a view of the tall figure of the squire standing with a
large plum-cake upon the shelf before him, into which he had made a
capacious incision; and a glass of wine, moreover, at a little distance.
This discovery naturally making our land-agent extremely restless, he
began to indicate his presence by sundry hems, shuffles, coughs, and
drummings on his chair, which immediately produced this consequence. The
old squire’s head protruded from behind the cupboard door with an
inquiring look; and finding the eyes of Mr. Mapleton as inquiringly
fixed on him, he said--“Mr. Mapleton, will you take a glass of wine?”
“Certainly, sir, with the greatest pleasure.” The wine was carefully
poured out, making various cluckings or sobbings in the throat of the
bottle, as very loath to leave it, and was set on the table before Mr.
Mapleton. No invitation, however, to a participation of the cake came;
and after sitting perhaps a quarter of an hour longer, listening to the
same inviting sounds of scraping plate and decantation, he was compelled
again to shuffle, hem, and drum. This had a similar happy effect to the
former attempt; out popped the squire’s head, with a--“Would you take
another glass, Mr. Mapleton?” “Certainly, sir, with the greatest
pleasure, I feel thirsty with my walk.” The bottle was produced and the
glass filled, but to put an end to any further intimations of thirst,
the door was instantly closed, the key dropped into the squire’s
capacious pocket, and the old gentleman forthwith entered upon business,
which, in fact, concerned thousands of pounds.
Before closing this gallery of country oddities, I must say that, in
some instances, much goodness of heart is mixed up with this wild growth
of queerness. There are very many who will know of whom I am speaking,
when I say that there was in the last generation a gentleman in one of
the midland counties, who was affected with this singular species of
monomania: at every execution at the county-town he purchased the rope
or ropes of Jack Ketch. These ropes, duly labelled with the name of the
culprit, the date of his execution, and the crime for which he suffered,
were hung round a particular room. On one occasion, arriving at the
town, and being told that the criminal was reprieved, he
exclaimed--“Gracious Heavens, then I have lost my rope!” The son of this
gentleman still displays a good deal of hereditary eccentricity, but has
destroyed these ropes. Nevertheless, I am told, that the carving-knife
used in his kitchen is the very sword with which Lord Byron killed
Chaworth. He still lives in the same house, and, old bachelor as he is,
maintains the old English style and hospitality in a degree not often to
be witnessed now. His personal appearance is unique. He is tall, with a
ruddy countenance, with white whiskers, white waistcoat, white breeches,
and white lining to his coat. He always appears most scrupulously and
delicately clean. His estate is large; and whoever goes to his house on
business, finds bread and cheese and ale set before him. His housekeeper
is said to receive no regular wages, but every now and then a
fifty-pound note is put into her hands, so that she has grown tolerably
rich. It is a standing order in the house, that every poor person, come
whence he may, who has lost a cow, and is seeking to get another, shall
receive a sovereign. I have heard a gentleman say, who knows him well,
that his benevolence, particularly to young tradesmen, is most
extraordinary: and that being himself once supposed to be on his
death-bed, this worthy man came, sate down by him, cried like a child,
and told him if he had not provided for his children just as he wished,
that he had only to tell him what he would have done, and then and there
it should be done. No relationship whatever existed; and this noble
offer was not accepted. The same gentleman told me that it is the
regular habit of this worthy example of Old English simplicity and
goodness of heart, every evening, before he retires to rest, to sit
quietly for a certain time in his easy chair, endeavouring to discover
whether he has done any thing wrong during the day, or has possibly hurt
any one’s feelings; and if he fancies he has, he hastens the next
morning to set all right. It is delightful to have to record proofs of
the yet existing spirit of ancient hospitality and simple worth of
character.[7]
[7] Since the first edition was published, this worthy but eccentric
gentleman is dead.
In conclusion,--let me observe that some of the foregoing cases are
shocking ones; but they are only too true; and such are but the events
of every day in those sleepy hollows, where public opinion has no
weight, and where ignorance and avarice are handed down from age to age.
I have seen hundreds of such things in such places. And what mode of
regeneration shall reach this class of people, who have the rust of
whole ages in their souls? You cannot offer to them education, as you do
to the poor. You cannot reason with them, as with the poor. They have
too much pride. It can only be by educating all around them, that you
can reach them. When they feel the effect of the education of the poor,
their pride will compel them to educate their children. This will be one
of the many good results that will flow from the education of the poor
in the back settlements of England. Let us, then, direct the stream of
knowledge into the remotest of these obscure places. If the penny
periodicals were, by some means, made to circulate there, as they
circulate in towns--the _Penny Magazine_, and _Saturday Magazine_, with
their host of wood-cuts and useful facts; and _Chambers’ Edinburgh
Journal_, with its more refined and poetical spirit,--they would work a
great change. Prints and cuts from good originals would awaken a better
taste; higher ideas of the beauty of created forms: for I say with
Rogers,
Be mine to bless the more mechanic skill
That stamps, renews, and multiplies at will;
And cheaply circulates through distant climes,
The fairest relics of the purest times.
We blame our populace for not possessing the same refined taste as the
French and Italians; for being brutal and destructive; that parks,
public walks, and public buildings, cannot be thrown open to them
without receiving injury. We ought not to blame them for this; for is
not this the _English spirit_ that has been praised in Parliament? for
the encouragement of which, bull-baitings, dog-fightings,
cock-fightings, and boxings have been pleaded for by senators, as its
proper aliment? and the Romans, with their gladiatorial shows, quoted
as good precedents? Forgetting that while the Romans were a growing and
conquering people, they were a simple and domestic people. When they had
their amphitheatres and their bloody shows of battling-men and beasts,
they fell under imperial despotism, and thence into national
destruction. If we will have a better spirit, we must take better means
to produce it. We can never make our rural population too well informed.
Ireland, with all manner of horrible outrages, England with its
rick-burnings, and Scotland with its orderly peasantry, all point
towards the evils of ignorance and oppression, and the national
advantage and individual happiness that are to be reaped from the spread
of sound knowledge through our rural districts.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III.
NOOKS OF THE WORLD:
LIFE IN THE DALES OF LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE.
The nooks of the world which we visited in our last chapter lay in
Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire; we will now change the scene a little
northward. Such secluded and original spots we might indeed readily
undertake to discover in almost every county of England; but I can only
give a few specimens from the great whole, and leave every one to look
about him for the rest. Lancashire is famous for its immense
manufactures, and consequent immense population. In ranging over its
wild, bleak hills, we are presently made sensible of the vast difference
between the character and habits of the working class, and the character
and habits of the pastoral and agricultural districts. We have no longer
those picturesque villages and cottages, half buried in their garden and
orchard trees; no longer those home-crofts, with their old, tall hedges;
no longer rows of beehives beneath their little thatched southern sheds;
those rich fields and farm-houses, surrounded with wealth of
corn-ricks, and herds and flocks. You have no longer that quiet and
Arcadian-looking population; hedgers and ditchers, ploughmen and
substantial farmers, who seem to keep through life the “peaceful tenor
of their way,” in old English fulness and content. There may be indeed,
and there are, such people scattered here and there; but they and their
abodes are not of the class which gives the predominant character to the
scenery. On the contrary, everywhere extend wild naked hills, in many
places totally unreclaimed; in others, enclosed, but exhibiting all the
signs of a neglected and spiritless husbandry; with stunted fences or
stone walls; and fields sodden with wet from want of drainage, and
consequently overgrown with rushes. Over these naked and desolate hills
are scattered to their very tops, in all directions, the habitations of
a swarming population of weavers; the people and their houses equally
unparticipant of those features which delight the poet and the painter.
The houses are erections of stone or brick, covered with glaring red
tiles, as free from any attempt at beauty or ornament as possible.
Without, where they have gardens, those gardens are as miserable and
neglected as the fields; within, they are squalid and comfortless.
In some of these swarming villages, ay, and in the cottages of the large
manufacturing towns too, you can scarcely see a window with whole panes
of glass. In one house in the outskirts of Blackburn, and that, too, an
alehouse, we counted in a window of sixty panes, eight-and-forty broken
ones; and this window was of a pretty uniform character with its
fellows, both in that house, and the neighbouring ones. It is not
possible to conceive a more violent and melancholy contrast than that
which the filth, the poverty, and forlornness of these weavers’ and
spinners’ dwellings form to the neatness, comfort, and loveliness of the
cottages of the peasantry in many other parts of the kingdom. Any man
who had once been through this district, might again recognise the
locality if he were taken thither blindfold, by the very smell of
oatcake which floats about the villages, and the sound of the shuttles,
with their eternal “latitat! latitat!” I ranged wide over the bleak
hills in the neighbourhood of Padiham, Belthorne, Guide, and such
places, and the numbers and aspect of the population filled me with
astonishment. Through the long miserable streets of those villages,
children and dogs were thick as motes in the sun. The boys and men with
their hair shorn off, as with a pair of wool-shears, close to their
heads, till it stood up staring and bristly, and yet left hanging long
over their eyes, till it gave them a most villanous and hangman look.
What makes those rough heads more conspicuous, is their being so
frequently red; the testimony of nature to the ancient prevalence of the
Dane on these hills. The men are besides long and bony; the women often
of stalwart and masculine figure, and of a hardness of feature which
gives them no claims to be ranked amongst the most dangerous of the
“Lancashire witches.” Everywhere the rudeness of the rising generation
is wonderful. Everywhere the stare of mingled ignorance and insolence
meets you; everywhere a troop of lads is at your heels, with the clatter
of their wooden clogs, crying--“Fellee, gies a hawpenny!”
In one village, and that too the celebrated Roman station of Ribchester,
our chaise was pursued by swarms of these wooden-shod lads like swarms
of flies, that were only beaten off for a moment to close in upon you
again, and their sisters shewed equally the extravagance of rudeness in
which they were suffered to grow up, by running out of the houses as we
passed, and poking mops and brushes at the horses’ heads. No one
attempted to restrain or rebuke them; and yet, what was odd enough, not
one of the adult population offered you the least insult, but if you
asked the way, gave you the most ready directions, and if you went into
their houses, treated you with perfect civility, and shewed an affection
for these wild brats that was honourable to their hearts, and wanted
only directing by a better intelligence. The uncouthness of these poor
people is not that of evil disposition, but of pressing poverty and
continued neglect. As is generally the case, in the poorest houses were
the largest families. Ten and eleven children in one small dirty hovel
was no uncommon sight, actually covering the very floor till there
seemed scarce room to sit down; and amid this crowd, the mother was
generally busy washing, or baking oatcakes; and the father making the
place resound with the “latitat, latitat” of his shuttle. One did not
wonder, seeing this, that the poor creatures are glad to turn out the
whole troop of children to play on the hills, the elder girls lugging
the babies along with them.
The wildness into which some of these children in the more solitary
parts of the country grow, is, I imagine, not to be surpassed in any of
the back settlements of America. On the 5th of July, 1836, the day of
that remarkable thunder-storm, which visited a great part of the kingdom
with such fury, being driven into a cottage at the foot of Pendle by the
coming on of this storm, and while standing at the door watching its
progress, I observed the head of some human creature carefully protruded
from the doorway of an adjoining shed, and as suddenly withdrawn on
being observed. To ascertain what sort of person it belonged to, I went
into the shed, but at first found it too dark to allow me to discover
any thing. Presently, however, as objects became visible, I saw a little
creature, apparently a girl of ten years old, reared very erectly
against the opposite wall. On accosting her in a kind tone, and telling
her to come forward, and not to be afraid, she advanced from the wall,
and behold! there stood another little creature about the head shorter,
whom she had been concealing. I asked the elder child whether this
younger one was a girl. She answered--“Ne-a.” “Was it a boy?” “Ne-a.”
“What! neither boy nor girl! was she herself a girl?” “Ne-a.” “What was
it a boy that I was speaking to?” “Ne-a.” “What in the name of wonder
were they then?” “We are childer.” “Childer! and was the woman in the
house their mother?” “Ne-a.” “Who was she then?” “Ar Mam.” “O! your mam!
and do you keep cows in this shed?” “Ne-a.” “What then?” “Bee-as.” In
short, common English was quite unintelligible to these little
creatures, and their appearance was as wild as their speech. They were
two fine young creatures, nevertheless, especially the elder, whose form
and face were full of that symmetry and free grace that are sometimes
the growth of unrestrained nature, and would have delighted the sculptor
or the painter. Their only clothing was a sort of little bodice with
skirts, made of a reddish stuff, and rendered more picturesque by sundry
patches of scarlet cloth, no doubt from their mother’s old cloak. Their
heads, bosoms, and legs to the knees, were bare to all the influences of
earth and heaven; and on giving them each a penny, they bounded away
with the fleetness and elasticity of young roes. No doubt, the hills
and the heaths, the wild flowers of summer and the swift waters of the
glens, were the only live-long day companions of these children, who
came home only to their oatmeal dinner, and a bed as simple as their
garments. Imagine the violent change of life, by the sudden capture and
confinement of these little English savages, in the night-and-day noise,
labour, and foul atmosphere of the cotton purgatories!
In the immediate neighbourhood of towns, many of the swelling ranges of
hills present a much more cultivated aspect, and delight the eye with
their smooth, green, and flowing outlines; and the valleys almost
everywhere, are woody, watered with clear rapid streams, and, in short,
are beautiful. But along these rise up the tall chimneys of vast and
innumerable factories, and even while looking on the palaces of the
master manufacturers, with their woods and gardens, and shrubbery lawns
around them, one cannot help thinking of all the horrors detailed before
the Committees of the House of Commons respecting the Factory System; of
the parentless and friendless little wretches, sent by wagon-loads from
distant workhouses to these prisons of labour and despair; of the young
frames crushed to the dust by incessant labour; of the beds into which
one set of children got, as another set got out, so that they were said
never to be cold the whole year round, till contagious fevers burst out
and swept away by hundreds these little victims of Mammon’s ever-urging,
never-ceasing wheel. Beautiful as are many of those wild glens and
recesses where, before the introduction of steam, the dashing rivulet
invited the cotton-spinners to erect their mills; and curious as the
remains of those simple original factories are, with their one great
water-wheel, which turned their spindles while there was water, but
during the drought of summer quite as often stood still; yet one is
haunted even there, amongst the shadows of fine old trees that throw
their arms athwart streams dashing down their beds of solid rock, by the
memory of little tender children who never knew pity or kindness, but
laboured on and on, through noon and through midnight, till they slept
and yet mechanically worked, and were often awaked only by the horrid
machinery rending off their little limbs. In places like these, where
now the old factories, and the large houses of the proprietors stand
deserted, or are inhabited by troops of poor creatures, whose poverty
makes them only appear the more desolate, we are told by such men as Mr.
Fielden of Oldham, once a factory child himself, and now a great
manufacturer, who dares to reveal the secrets of the prison-house, that
little creatures have even committed suicide to escape from a life worse
than ten deaths. And what a mighty system is this now become! What a
perpetual and vast supply of human life and energy it requires, with all
the facilities of improved machinery, with all the developed power of
steam, and with all the growing thirst of wealth to urge it on! We are
told that the state of the factories, and the children employed in them,
is greatly improved; and I trust they are; but if there be any truth in
the evidence given before the parliamentary committees, there is need of
great amelioration yet; and it is when we recollect these things, how
completely the labouring class has, in these districts, been regarded as
mere machinery for the accumulation of enormous capitals, that we cease
to wonder at their uncouth and degraded aspect, and at the neglect in
which they are suffered to swarm over these hills,--like the very weeds
of humanity, cast out into disregarded places, and left to spread and
increase in rank and deleterious luxuriance. The numbers of drunken men
that you meet in these districts in an evening, and the numbers of
_women_ that you see seated with their ale-pots and pipes round the
alehouse fires, a sight hardly elsewhere to be witnessed, form a
striking contrast to the state of things in the agricultural districts,
such as Craven, where you may pass through half-a-dozen villages, and
not find one pot-house.
It was necessary to take a glimpse at these Lancashire hills in
reviewing the rural life of England; let us now pass into a tract of the
country which borders immediately upon them, and yet is so totally
unlike in its aspect and population. We shall now penetrate into perhaps
the most perfect nook of the world that England holds. The Yorkshire
dales are known to most by name, but to comparatively few by actual
visitation. They lie amongst that wild tract of hills which stretches
along the West Riding of Yorkshire, from Lancashire to Westmoreland, and
forms part, in fact, of the great mountainous chain which runs from
Derbyshire through these counties and Cumberland into Scotland. Some of
these hills are of great bulk and considerable altitude. The old rhymes
are well known of--
Ingleborough, Pendle, and Pennegent
Are the highest hills betwixt Scotland and Trent;
and
Pendle, Pennegent, and Ingleborough
Are the highest hills all England thorough.
The Yorkshire dales stretch from the foot of Ingleborough north-east and
west, over a considerable space of country. It is a wild, and, in many
parts, a dreary region. Long ridges of hills covered with black heath,
or bare stone,--with stony wastes at their feet of the grimmest and most
time-worn character. All round Ingleborough the whole country seems to
have been so tossed, shaken, and undermined by the violence which at
some period broke it up into its present character, that its whole
subterranean space seems to be filled with caves and passages for winds
and waters that possess a remarkable connexion one with another, and
present a multitude of singular phenomena. On the Craven side lie those
celebrated spots Malham Cove and Gordale Scar, well known to tourists;
the one, a splendid range of precipice with a river issuing from its
base; the other, Gordale Scar, one of the most solemnly impressive of
nature’s works. It is the course of a river which has torn its way from
the top of a mountain, through a rugged descent in the solid rock, and
falls into a sort of cove surrounded by lofty precipices, which make
such a gloom, that on looking up, the stars are said sometimes to be
seen at noon. Amongst all the magnificent scenes which the mountainous
parts of these kingdoms present, I never visited one which impressed me
with so much awe and wonder as this. You approach it by no regular road;
you have even to ask permission to pass through the yard of a
farm-house, to get at it; and your way is then up a valley, along which
come two or three streams, running on with a wild beauty and abundance
that occupy and delight your attention. Suddenly, you pass round a rock,
and find yourself in this solemn cove, the high grey cliffs towering
above you on all sides, the water dropping from their summits in a
silver rain, and before you a river descending from a cleft in the
mountain, and falling, as it were, over a screen, and spreading in white
foam over it in a solemn and yet riotous beauty. This screen is formed
of the calcareous deposit of the water; and crossing the stream by the
stones which lie in it, you may mount from the greensward which carpets
the bottom of the cove, climb up this screen, and ascend along the side
of the falling torrent, up one of the most wild and desolate ravines,
till you issue on the mountain top, where the mountain cistus and the
crimson geranium wave their lovely flowers in the breeze.
These scenes lie on the Craven side of Ingleborough, and as you wind
round his feet, though distantly, by Settle, to the dales, your way is
still amongst the loftiest fells, and past continual proofs of
subterranean agency, and agency of past violence. You are scarcely past
Settle, when by the road-side you see a trough overflowing with the most
beautifully transparent water. You stop to look at it, and it shrinks
before your eyes six or seven inches, perhaps, below the edge of the
trough, and then again comes gushing and flowing over. As you advance,
the very names of places that lie in view speak of a wild region, and
have something of the old British or Danish character in them. To your
left shine the waters distantly of Lancaster Sands, and Morecombe Bay,
and around you are the Great Stone of Four Stones, the Cross of Grete,
Yorda’s Cave, that is, the cave of Yorda, the Danish sorceress;
Weathercote Cave, and Hurtle-pot and Gingle-pot. Our progress over this
ground, though early in July, was amid clouds, wind and rain. The black
heights of Ingleborough were only visible at intervals through the
rolling rack, and all about Weathercote Cave, Hurtle-pot and Gingle-pot
were traces of the violence of outbursting waters. We found a capital
inn nearly opposite the Weathercote Cave, where one of the tallest of
imaginable women presented us with a luncheon of country fare,--oatcake,
cheese, and porter, and laid our cloaks and great-coats to dry while we
visited the Cave and the Pots. Weathercote Cave is not, as the
imagination would naturally suggest to any one, a cave in the side of a
hill or precipice, but a savage chasm in the ground, in which you hear
the thunder of falling waters. It is just such a place as one dreams of
in ancient Thessaly, haunted by Pan and the Satyrs. When you come to the
brink of this fearful chasm, which is overhung with trees and bushes,
you perceive a torrent falling in a column of white foam, and with a
thundering din, into a deep abyss. Down to the bottom of this abyss
there is a sloping descent, amongst loose and slippery stones. When you
reach the bottom, a cavern opens on your left, into which you may pass,
so as to avoid the mass of falling water, which is dashed upon a large
black stone, and then is absorbed by some unseen channel. The huge
blocks of stone which lie in this cave appear black and shining as
polished ebony. I suppose this chasm is at least a hundred feet deep,
and yet a few days before we were there, it had been filled to
overflowing with water, which had rushed from its mouth with such
violence as to rend down large trees around it. What is still more
remarkable, at a few hundred yards distance is another chasm of equal
depth, and of perpendicular descent, whence the torrents swallowed by
the Weathercote Cave during great rains are again ejected with
incredible violence. This had taken place, as we have said, a few days
before our visit, and though this gulf was now dry again, the evidences
of its fury were all around us. Wagon-loads of stones lay at its mouth,
which had been hurled up with the torrent of water, all churned or
hurtled (whence its name of Hurtle-pot) by its violence into the
roundness of pebbles; and trees were laid prostrate, with their branches
crushed into fragments, in the track by which the waters had escaped.
This track was towards the third singular abyss--Gingle-pot. This gulf
had a wider and more sloping mouth than the other, so that you could
descend a considerable depth into it, but there you found a black and
sullen water, which the people say has never been fathomed. It is said
to contain a species of black trout, which are caught, we were told, by
approaching the surface of the water with lighted torches by night,
towards which they rise. Several country fellows were amusing themselves
as we approached with rolling large stones into the abyss, which
certainly sunk into the water with an awful sound.
Such is the region which abuts upon the Yorkshire dales. The dales
themselves are the intervening spaces betwixt high fells, which run in
long ranges one beyond another in a numerous succession. Some of these
dales possess a considerable breadth of meadow land, as Wensley-dale,
but the far greater number have scarcely more room in the bottom than is
occupied by the stream and the public road. Thus every dale seems a
little world in itself, being shut in by its high ranges of fell. If you
ascend to the ridge of one of these, you find another dale, lying at
your feet, with its own little community; were you to cross to the next
ridge, you would find another, and so on, far and wide. It is a land of
alternating ridge and hollow, ridge and hollow, or in the language of
the district, fell and dale, without any intervention of champaign
country. Wordsworth’s description in Peter Bell, shows that the poet had
been there, as well as the potter.
And he had trudged through Yorkshire dales,
Among the rocks and winding scars;
Where deep and low the hamlets lie,
Beneath their little patch of sky,
And little lot of stars.
Formerly, when there were no roads into these secluded dales, except
some shingly ravine, down which the pedestrian, or one of their native
ponies could with considerable caution, and sundry strikings of the foot
against loose stones, descend, few, except the inhabitants themselves,
could visit them, and they then must have possessed a primitive
character indeed. Now, however, good roads run through them, and a
greater intercourse with the surrounding country must have had its
effect, yet I know no other corner of England where still linger so
patriarchal a character and such peculiar habits.
George Fox, in his travels far and wide through the realm to promulgate
his doctrines, penetrated into these dales. From the top of Pendle-hill
in Lancashire, where there is an immense prospect, he tells us in his
journal, that he had a vision of the triumphs of his ministry, and of
the thousands that would be converted to his peculiar faith. Descending
in the strength of this revelation, he marched northward, and speedily
found in these dales a primitive race, ready to adopt his opinions and
practices, so congenial to a simple and earnest-hearted people. There he
repeatedly came, and sojourned long; and the accounts of the
extraordinary meetings held, and the effect produced, have few parallels
in the histories of religious reformers. There is a little
Church-of-England chapel perched on the highest point of Kendal Fells,
not far from Sedburgh, which is in the outskirts of this district,
called Firbank Chapel, where a thousand people are said to have been
collected to hear him, and at which three hundred people were convinced
of the truth, to use his own words, at one time,--Francis Howgill, the
minister, being one of them. That little chapel is standing yet, perhaps
the very humblest fabric in England belonging to the Established Church,
old and dilapidated, and situated in one of the most singular and wild
situations. There are the identical little windows, at which some of the
old people stood within the chapel to listen to the preacher without,
thinking it strange to worship anywhere but in a church or chapel. Near
the door is a rock, on which he relates that he stood to preach. From
its high site you look around over dreary moors, and a vast tract of
outstretched country, and wonder whence the people gathered to his
ministry. But his fame was that of an apostle all round this country. In
Sedburgh churchyard stand two yew trees, under the shade of which, he,
on one occasion, preached, drawing all the people out of the church to
him. Within the dales themselves he planted several meetings, at
Aysgarth, Counterside and Laygate. These meetings still remain, and a
considerable number of Friends are scattered through the dales, of a
primitive and hospitable character. We went, on the only Sunday which we
passed in the dales, to his favourite meeting at Counterside, and could
almost have imagined that the remarkable times of his ministry were yet
remaining. We found the meeting situated amid a cluster of rustic
cottages in pleasant Simmerdale, by Simmerdale Water. The house in which
he usually lived during his visits to this valley adjoined the meeting;
a true old-fashioned house, where the remains of his oaken bedstead were
still preserved; and a very handsome one it must have been, and far too
much adorned with the vanity of carving for so plain a man, and so
homely a place. But the people were flocking from all sides, down the
fells, along the dales, to the meeting, not only the Friends themselves,
but the other dalespeople; and we found Mr. Joseph Pease, brother of the
M.P., and his lady, from Darlington, addressing a crowded audience. The
old times of Fox seemed indeed returned. The preacher’s discourse was
one of an earnest and affectionate eloquence, and the audience was of a
most simple and unworldly character. Almost every person, man or woman,
had a nosegay in hand; nosegays in truth, for they very liberally and
repeatedly applied them to the organ whence they are named. The herbs,
for they consisted rather of herbs than flowers, were as singular as the
appearance of such a host of nosegays itself. Not one of them was
without a piece of southernwood, in some instances almost amounting to a
bush, and evidently there entitled to its ancient name, “lads’-love and
lasses’-delight.” With this was grasped in many a hardy hand, thyme, and
alecost, and, in many, mint! No doubt the pungent qualities of these
herbs are found very useful stimulants in close and crowded places of
worship, and especially under a drowsy preacher, by those whose
occupations for the other six days lie chiefly out-of-doors, in the keen
air of hills and moors. That such is the object of them was sufficiently
indicated by a poor woman who offered us a little bunch of these herbs
as we entered the meeting-house, saying with a smile, “they are so
reviving.”
Amongst the Friends, are a considerable number of substantial people,
who lead here a sort of patriarchal life, with their flocks and herds on
the hills around them. And their houses, placed on the slope of the
hills, yet not far above the level of the valley, with their ample
gardens, must be in the summer months most agreeable abodes. Old English
hospitality and kindness are found here in all their strength. We called
on several of the resident proprietors, and amongst others Mr. William
Fothergill, at Carr-End, since deceased. The garden of this gentleman
was a perfect paradise of roses. But the fine old intellectual man
himself, retaining beyond his eightieth year, and in this secluded
place, all the enthusiasm of youth, the love of books, and aspirations
after the spread of knowledge and freedom through the world, was a still
more attractive object. He was the descendant of two well-known men, Dr.
Fothergill, and Samuel Fothergill, an eminent minister in this society.
Talent and liberality of sentiment seem a congenial growth of these
dales, for the able and noble-minded Adam Sedgwick is a native of one of
them.
To that valley, the beautiful vale of Dent, we may as well betake
ourselves, for in describing these retired regions, one portion may with
great propriety be taken as a specimen of the whole. Descending
therefore from the moors at Newby-Head, we found this southern entrance
of Dent-dale steep and narrow. As we proceeded, it wound on before us
for several miles, till we beheld the village of Dent lying at its
northern extremity. Dent’s-Town, as they call it, has a very Swiss look,
with its projecting roofs, and open galleries ascended by steps from the
outside. But what strikes you with most surprise in this dale is its
high state of cultivation. All the lower part of the dale is divided
into small enclosures, rich with grass and summer flowers, and
beautifully wooded; and amid the orchards and gardens, peep out houses
of various sizes and characters. The hills nearly meet at the bottom,
and ascend high, in two long ranges. The upper part, above the
enclosures, appears, in some parts, black with heath, but more generally
smooth and green, and dotted all over with flocks of sheep and geese. On
the wilder parts of these hills graze a great number of cattle, and a
shaggy race of ponies peculiar to them, with coats and manes long, and
bleached by the wintry winds, till they look at a distance, more like
wild bisons than horses. These dun ponies, before the progress of
enclosure, used sometimes to follow the tops of the hills right away
into Scotland, and have been fetched back from a distance of two hundred
miles. When they have shed their wintry coats, and ceased to have such a
look
As of the dwellers out of doors;
they often turn out very beautiful creatures, remarkably sure-footed,
and highly prized for drawing in ladies’ pony-carriages. But we must
descend into the valley: and here one of the most remarkable features is
the river. It has all the character of a mountain torrent; huge stones,
and masses of gravel everywhere demonstrating the occasional violence of
the waters. But what has the most singular effect, its bed is one of
solid stone, in some parts black or dark-grey marble, which is chafed
and worn by the fury of the stream in floods, in such a manner that it
looks itself like a rushing, billowy river, petrified by enchantment. A
great part of this bed during the summer is dry, and therefore the more
remarkable in its aspect. Here and there you may walk along it for a
considerable distance; then again it descends in precipices, and amid
blocks of stone of a gigantic character. One of these places is known by
the name of Hell’s Cauldron, no doubt, in rainy seasons, a most
appropriate name; for the river here, overhung with dark masses of
trees, falls over some huge steps of the stony bed into a deep and
black abyss, where the rending of the rocks and washing up of heaps of
debris, shew with what fury that cauldron boils. But what are still more
significant of this fury, are the hollows worn into the very mass of the
ledges of rocks over which it passes, one of which, overlooking the
abyss, is called the Pulpit, from its form, and in which you may stand.
These hollows, which are scooped out with wonderful regularity, appear
to be made by the churning and grinding of stones, which get in wherever
the softer parts of the rocks give way to the action of the floods. Yet
fearful as this Hell’s Cauldron must be when the stream is swollen, we
were told that a boy once slipped in, and was carried through it, and
washed up on the bank below, unhurt; calling out to his astounded
companions--“Here am I! where are you?” The public road runs along the
side of the stream, down the valley. This stream is crossed by two queer
little foot-bridges, called by the odd names of Tummy and Nelly, or
Tummy-Brig and Nelly-Brig, having been built by two persons of these
familiar names, to accommodate the inhabitants of the opposite sides of
the dale. And truly, as will be shortly evident, a great accommodation
they must be, not only in cases of actual business, but in those
visitings which go on in the dale.
Not only the people and their houses have an old-fashioned look, but you
see continually out-of-doors lingering vestiges of long-past times and
ancient usages. There are sledges with which they bring stone and peat
from the tops of the fells. I have often wondered at the industry of
mountain-people in building up those stone walls, or dykes, as they call
them, which you often see running up the mountain sides, to very distant
and often very steep places; but crossing these fells, I discovered that
the labour was far less than it seemed at first sight. The material has
not to be carried up these lofty ascents; it abounds on their summits,
and has only to be loosened, and slid down the hill sides on sledges, as
they proceed, for they begin to build at the top, and not at the bottom.
So their peat for fuel is found in abundance on the wet and spongy tops
of these hills, and is dug, and reared on end to dry through the summer,
and in the autumn is slid down on sledges. In the Scottish Highlands you
see the women bringing the peat from the mountains in large creels, or
baskets, on their backs, while their husbands are perhaps angling in
the loch below; but here the men generally act a less lordly part;
cutting and drying the peat with the help of their boys, and sledging it
into the bargain.
Besides these sledges, they have also that very ancient species of cart,
the tumbrel; or, as they call it, the Tumble-Car. This is of so
primitive a construction that the wheels do not revolve on a fixed axle,
but the axle and wheels all revolve together. The wheels themselves are
of a construction worthy of so pristine an axle; they are, in truth,
wheels of the original idea; not things of the complex construction of
nave, spokes, and fellies, but solid blocks of wood, into which the axle
is firmly inserted; upon this axle the body of the vehicle is laid, and
kept in its place by a couple of pegs. It is such a cart as you might
imagine rumbling down these hills in the days of their Saxon ancestors.
Since good roads have been opened through the dales, carts of modern
construction have followed, and these tumbrels will in awhile be no
longer seen. They have, however, this advantage; in descending the steep
sides of the hills, their clumsy construction of axle and wheel prevents
them from running down too fast, and this is the cause why they are
still retained. And yet this difficulty of movement sometimes becomes
the cause of awkward dilemmas. These tumbrels are apt to stick in the
bogs as they come down the fells, and are not easily drawn out. We were
assured that there was one then sticking in a bog on the hills, past all
chance of recovery; and some wag of the dale had made this distich on
the accident, denoting the peculiar pre-eminence of clumsiness in the
unfortunate vehicle.
Willie O’Middlebrough’s tumble-car,
Many were better, and none waur.
With a carriage so antique, one is not surprised to find gears of
corresponding character. Consequently, as in Cornwall, so here, collars
of straw and a few ropes often serve to harness out the team.
As might be supposed, the inhabitants of one dale form a little
community or clan where every one is known to the rest, and where a
great degree of sociality and familiarity prevails; but the whole dale
sub-divides itself again into neighbourhoods, where a stronger _esprit
du corps_ exists. The dales are singularly marked by lines of ravines
and streams, which run down the sides of the fells from the bogs and
springs on the heights. These lines are commonly fringed on the lower
slopes by alders and other water-loving trees. The smaller streams are
called sikes, the larger gills, and the largest, being generally those
which run along the dale, becks. The space from gill to gill generally
constitutes a neighbourhood, or if that space is small, it may include
two or three gills. Within this boundary they feel it a duty,
established by time and immemorial usage, to perform all offices of good
neighbourhood, and especially that of associating together. For
instance, when a birth is about to take place, they have what is called
a Shout. The nearest neighbour undertakes the office of herald. She runs
from house to house, through the neighbourhood, though it be dead of
night, summoning all the wives with this cry--“Run, neighbour, run, for
neighbour such-a-one wants thy help--and take thy warming-pan with
thee!” The consequence is, that the house is speedily filled with women
and warming-pans; a scene ludicrous, and, one would imagine,
inconvenient enough too; but which the women of the dale all protest is
a great comfort. When the child is born, there is a great ceremony of
washing its head with brandy, which is performed by the father and his
male friends, who are assembled for the occasion; and who then fall to,
and make merry over their glasses.
The assembled women regale themselves with a feast of their own kind,
being a particular species of bread made for the occasion, and
sweet-butter; that is, butter mixed with rum and sugar, and having in
truth no despicable flavour. Then comes the Wife-day, generally the
second Sunday after the birth, when all the women of the neighbourhood
who have attended at the Shout, go dressed in their best, to take tea,
and hold a regular gossip, each carrying with her a shilling and the
news of the neighbourhood. The highest possible offence that can be
given, is to pass over a person within the understood limits of the
neighbourhood--it is the dead-cut. Sometimes there occurs a false Shout,
either through the wantonness or malice of some ne’er-do-weel. In the
night, the mischievous wag runs from house to house, and calls all the
good wives to the dwelling whence they are hourly expecting such a
summons. When they get there, they find it a hoax, and come under the
name of May-goslings,--the term applied to this species of dupe. The
joke, however, is no venial one, for it is perhaps played off on a
severe and tempestuous night, and the good dames muffled up in their
cloaks, and lantern and warming-pan in hand, have to steer their way
down the sides of hills, and across becks hidden by the drifts of snow.
Similar assemblages take place at deaths, called Passings; and at
Christmas, when they eat yule bread and yule cheese, made after a
particular formula.
But perhaps the most characteristic custom of the Dales, is what is
called their Sitting, or going-a-sitting. Knitting is a great practice
in the dales. Men, women, and children, all knit. Formerly you might
have met the wagoners knitting as they went along with their teams; but
this is now rare; for the greater influx of visiters, and their wonder
expressed at this and other practices, has made them rather ashamed of
some of them, and shy of strangers observing them. But the men still
knit a great deal in the houses; and the women knit incessantly. They
have knitting schools, where the children are taught; and where they
sing in chorus knitting songs, some of which appear as childish as the
nursery stories of the last generation. Yet all of them bear some
reference to their employment and mode of life; and the chorus, which
maintains regularity of action and keeps up the attention, is of more
importance than the words. Here is a specimen.
Bell-wether o’ Barking,[8] cries baa, baa,
How many sheep have we lost to-day?
Nineteen have we lost, one have we fun,
Run Rockie,[9] run Rockie, run, run, run.
This is sung while they knit one round of the stocking; when the second
round commences they begin again--
Bell-wether o’ Barking, cries baa, baa,
How many sheep have we lost to-day?
Eighteen have we lost, two have we fun,
Run Rockie, run Rockie, run, run, run;
and so on till they have knit twenty rounds, decreasing the numbers on
the one hand, and increasing them on the other. These songs are sung
not only by the children in the schools, but also by the people at their
sittings, which are social assemblies of the neighbourhood, not for
eating and drinking, but merely for society. As soon as it becomes dark,
and the usual business of the day is over, and the young children are
put to bed, they rake or put out the fire; take their cloaks and
lanterns, and set out with their knitting to the house of the neighbour
where the sitting falls in rotation, for it is a regularly circulating
assembly from house to house through the particular neighbourhood. The
whole troop of neighbours being collected, they sit and knit, sing
knitting-songs, and tell knitting-stories. Here all the old stories and
traditions of the dale come up, and they often get so excited that they
say, “Neighbours, we’ll not part to night,” that is, till after twelve
o’clock. All this time their knitting goes on with unremitting speed.
They sit rocking to and fro like so many weird wizards. They burn no
candle, but knit by the light of the peat fire. And this rocking motion
is connected with a mode of knitting peculiar to the place, called
swaving, which is difficult to describe. Ordinary knitting is performed
by a variety of little motions, but this is a single uniform tossing
motion of both the hands at once, and the body often accompanying it
with a sort of sympathetic action. The knitting produced is just the
same as by the ordinary method. They knit with crooked pins called
pricks; and use a knitting-sheath consisting commonly of a hollow piece
of wood, as large as the sheath of a dagger, curved to the side, and
fixed in a belt called the cowband. The women of the north, in fact,
often sport very curious knitting sheaths. We have seen a wisp of straw
tied up pretty tightly, into which they stick their needles; and
sometimes a bunch of quills of at least half-a-hundred in number. These
sheaths and cowbands are often presents from their lovers to the young
women. Upon the band there is a hook, upon which the long end of the
knitting is suspended that it may not dangle. In this manner they knit
for the Kendal market, stockings, jackets, nightcaps, and a kind of caps
worn by the negroes, called bump-caps. These are made of very coarse
worsted, and knit a yard in length, one half of which is turned into the
other, before it has the appearance of a cap.
[8] A mountain over-looking Dent Dale.
[9] The shepherd’s dog.
The smallness of their earnings may be inferred from the price for the
knitting of one of these caps being three-pence. But all knit, and
knitting is not so much their sole labour as an auxiliary gain. The
woman knits when her household work is done; the man when his
out-of-door work is done; as they walk about their garden, or go from
one village to another, the process is going on. We saw a stout rosy
girl driving some cows to the field. She had all the character of a
farmer’s servant. Without any thing on her head, in her short bedgown,
and wooden clogs, she went on after them with a great stick in her hand.
A lot of calves which were in the field, as she opened the gate, seemed
determined to rush out, but the damsel laid lustily about them with her
cudgel, and made them decamp. As we observed her proceedings from a
house opposite, and, amused at the contest between her and the calves,
said, “well done! dairymaid!” “O,” said the woman of the house, “that is
no dairymaid: she is the farmer’s only daughter, and will have quite a
fortune. She is the best knitter in the dale, and makes four bump-caps a
day;” that is, the young lady of fortune earned a shilling a day.
The neighbouring dale, Garsdale, which is a narrower and more secluded
one than Dent, is a great knitting dale. The old men sit there in
companies round the fire, and so intent are they on their occupation and
stories, that they pin cloths on their shins to prevent their being
burnt; and sometimes they may be seen on a bench at the house-front, and
where they have come out to cool themselves, sitting in a row knitting
with their shin-cloths on, making the oddest appearance imaginable.
It may be supposed that eccentricity of character is the growth of such
a place. A spirit of avarice is one of the most besetting evils. Many of
the people are proprietors of their little homesteads; but there is no
manufacturing beyond that of knitting, and money therefore is scarce. As
it is not to be got very easily, the disposition to hold and save it
becomes proportionably strong. They are extremely averse to suffer any
money to go out of the dale; and will buy nothing, if they can avoid it,
of people who travel the country with articles to sell; that would be
sending money out of the dale; but they will go to a shop in the dale,
and buy the same thing, not reflecting that the shopkeeper must first
purchase it out of the dale, and therefore send money out of the dale
to pay for it; and that what goes out of the dale for such articles
comes back again by the sale of their horses, cattle, and sheep. A
person who had been collector of the taxes in one of these dales,
described to us the excessive difficulty he had to collect the money,
even from those whom he knew always had it. They would put off payments
as long as possible, and when he went and told them it was positively
the last time he could call, they would sit doggedly, and declare that
Samson was strong and Solomon was wise, but neither could pay money when
they had not it. When they saw he would not depart, they would at length
get up, go up stairs, where they always kept their cash. There he could
hear them slowly open their chest, let down the lid again; open it again
in awhile; then shut it again, and walk about the room as if unable to
part with it. Then they would come to the top of the stairs, and shout
down, saying they would not pay it. Finding him still immovable, they
would come slowly down, but still persist--“I’ll nae gie it thee!” Then
perhaps soon after, as if relenting, they would come towards him, open
their hand with the money in it, extending it towards him; but when he
offered to take it, snatch it away, saying--“Nay; tou’st niver hae it!”
Finally, they would throw it to him, and with it abundance of angry
words.
We met a man of a most gaunt and miserable appearance. A young man not
more than thirty years of age. He had all the aspect of a penurious
fellow. Dirty, unshaven, with soiled clothes and unwashed linen. He was
coming along the lane with a rude tumbrel. This man was a thorough miser
as ever existed. He lived totally alone. He suffered no woman to come
about his house. If his clothes ever were washed they were done by
himself, but he never bought an ounce of soap. He had bought a small
property; a house and some adjoining crofts, where he lived. From this
place he was called Tony of Todcrofts. This man was never known to part
with money except to the tax-gatherer. If he wanted a board put on his
cart, or a nail to keep it together, he bargained with the wheelwright
or the blacksmith to pay them in peat. He baked his own oatcake, and
paid the miller in peat for grinding his oats. He drank milk from his
own cow, and made his own clogs, cut from his own alder. He contrived
to purchase little, and what he did purchase he still paid for in peat.
On the fells he cut peat all summer, making days of uncommon length; and
in the autumn he drew it down with a sledge, and on one occasion, having
no horse, he carried the sledge, every time he re-ascended the hills,
upon his back.
In a neighbouring dale we passed the farm called Barben-park, which we
were informed had been held by the family occupying it, on a lease for
three lives, now being in the last life; of which the rent is so low
that the tenant has oftener, on the rent-day, to receive money, on
account of taxes and rates, than to pay any away. The house struck us as
one of the most wild and solitary places of abode we had ever seen. It
stood on the fell side, and for many miles there appeared no other
house, nor any trace of human workmanship, but a few ruinous limekilns.
The inhabitants were represented as wild and rude as their location, yet
rich, the hills all round being covered with their sheep, ponies,
cattle, and geese, which seemed in a great measure to run wild, and
increase in a state of complete nature. There were said to be bulls of
great savageness amongst them--the bulls of Barben being as awfully
famous here as the bulls of Bashan of old; and foxes which the farmers
often turned out, and chased with all their men for miles along the
hills. A gentleman who had been at this house described the people as
living like ancient kings in the rude abundance of earthly plenty. In
Wensleydale there is a large farmer who keeps up the primitive custom of
two meals a day, from Candlemas to Martinmas, which is the depth of
winter. They breakfast at ten o’clock on cold meat, ale, cheese, etc.;
and do not go into the house again till six in the evening, by which
time they have not only returned from the fields, but have seen all
their cattle served for the night, and a hot dinner of meat, puddings,
and other good things, awaits them and their servants, who sit eating
and drinking till bed-time.
In such a place a man’s appearance is no indication of his actual
condition as respects property. Men who have good estates will be seen
in a dress not worth three farthings altogether, except it were as a
curiosity. They tell a story with great glee, of an old Friend, John
Wilkinson, who sate in a patched coat on a large stone by the road-side,
knitting, when a gentleman riding by, stopped and fixed his eyes on him
as in compassion, and then threw him half-a-crown. He picked it up, told
him he was much obliged to him, but added--“May be I’se richer na tou,”
and returned him the money, desiring him to give it to some one who had
greater need of it. In fact, the old Friend was wealthy; and in this
case his pride overcame his acquisitive propensity; but that propensity
is unquestionably very powerful here, and another instance may be
mentioned which occasioned a good deal of laughter in the dale. An old
man of some property having a colt which he wanted breaking, instead of
putting it into the hands of the horsebreaker, thought he would break it
himself, and save the cost. Having brought it to carry him pretty well,
he was desirous of making it proof against starting at sudden alarms. He
therefore concerted with his wife that she should stand concealed behind
the yard gate, with her cloak thrown over her head, and as he entered on
the back of his colt, should pop out, and cry--Boh! Accordingly, in he
rode, out popped the good-wife, and cried Boh! so effectually, that the
horse made a desperate leap, and flung the old man with a terrible shock
upon the pavement. Recovering himself, however, without any broken
bones, though sorely bruised and shaken, he said, as he limped into the
house--“Ah, Mally! Mally! that was too big a boh! for an old man and a
young colt!”
This propensity extends too amongst the women as well as the men: one
woman declared she would as lieve part with the skin off her back as
with her money. And yet there are things which they will not do for
money, as thousands of the poor in other districts do,--they won’t work
in a factory. The experiment was tried in this dale; but the people,
like the French, would only work just when they pleased, and soon would
not work at all. One would have thought that the strong love of gain
amongst them, and their industrious habits, would have insured success
to such an experiment; but they had too much love for their own
firesides, and the enjoyment of the fresh mountain air; the parents had
too much love for their children to subject them to the daily
incarceration amid heat, and dust, and flue from the cotton. The scheme
failed; the factory stands a ruinous monument of the attempt, and these
beautiful dales are yet free from the factory system. And yet, peaceful,
and far removed as they are from the acts and oppressions by which the
strong build their houses, and add field to field out of the toils of
the weak, they are not unacquainted with occasional instances of the
evils done with impunity in the nooks of the world. I do not mean to
represent such spots as Arcadias of purity and perfection. In the former
chapter, and in this, I have indicated the vices which flourish, and the
depravity which spreads in the shade of secluded life. The worst feature
of these dales is the penurious spirit which little opportunity of
profit produces; but I do not know that this spirit is a more sordid one
than pervades the lower streets and alleys of large towns. There is
along with it a strong sense of meum and tuum; a strong and uncorrupted
moral principle; and no man is in danger of either being filched of his
purse, or if he chanced to lose it by accident, of not regaining it. As
the pressure of poverty is not so tremendous, so the extinction of the
moral sense is by no means so great as in large towns; and, on the other
hand, how much more delightful a view of the social life of these people
we have, than of those of similar rank in our large manufacturing towns,
and especially amongst the lower classes of the metropolis, where they
tread on each other from their multitudes, and yet, from the same cause,
pass through life strangers to each other. Here the social sympathies
are strongly called forth; a sort of kinship seems to pervade the whole
neighbourhood; and they pass their lives, if in a good deal of poverty,
yet in mutual confidence, and very pleasant habits of association. Every
man and every spot has a name and share of distinction. Every gill and
beck have their appellation, as Hacker-gill; Arten-gill; How-gill;
Cow-gill; Spice-gill; Thomas O’Harbour-gill; Backstone-gill; Kale-beck;
Monkey-beck. Every house has its name;--as Tinkler’s Budget; Clint;
Henthwaite-Hall; Coat-Fall; The Birchen Tree; Lile-Town; Riveling;
Broad Mere; Hollins; Ellen-ha; Scale-gill-foot; Clinter-Bank;
Hollow-Mill,--all names in Dent. Their names for one another are the
most familiar possible; and they use the christian names, and attach the
christian names of their fathers and mothers in such a manner, that it
is difficult to get at many people’s surnames. They themselves know very
well John o’ Davits Fletcher, Kit o’ Willie, or Willie o’ Kit o’ Willie;
when if the real name of these people were John Davis, Catherine
Broadbent, or William Thistlethwaite, they would have to consider
awhile who was meant, if asked for by these names.
The dales-people have, therefore, evidently good elements; a strong
social feeling; great simplicity of life and character; great
honesty;--and the extension of the facility of voting in elections by
dividing the counties, and appointing local polling places, has
demonstrated that they have a strong love of liberal principles. All
that appears wanting is exactly what is wanting in all these nooks, the
introduction of more knowledge by the diffusion of sound and cheap
publications, which would at once raise the moral tone, and inspire a
more adventurous disposition, as is the case with the Scotch; so that
those who do not find profitable employment in these pastoral dales,
should set out in quest of more promising fields of action. As to crimes
of magnitude, if you hear of them here, they are perpetrated by those in
a higher class. There was a story ringing through one of the dales when
we were there, which if half of it were true, was bad enough; and that
we might arrive at as much truth as possible, we visited and conversed
with those who were apparently likeliest to know it. It was said, and
this too by those who had been in daily intercourse with the
parties--that a very wealthy widow lady, who seemed to have been of weak
intellect, or at least so unaccustomed to the world, and matters of
business, as to become an easy prey to any clever and designing fellow,
had entrusted the management of her affairs to a lawyer of a
neighbouring town. That this lawyer twenty years ago made her will, in
which he had appointed himself one of the executors, and a gentleman of
high character, living at a great distance, the other. That he had left
in the will ten per cent. on the accumulations of her income to the
executors, besides 500_l._ each, for the trouble of their office. That a
man brought up in the house of the lady was left 5000_l._ That from the
original making of the will, it appeared never to have been read over
again at any time to the lady; but that she had frequently dictated or
written in pencil her instructions for its alteration in many
particulars, which instructions or alterations at the final reading of
the will after her decease nowhere appeared. That from the time the will
was made till that of her death, twenty years, her lawyer-executor had
continually tormented her with the fear of poverty. He had told her that
her income did not meet her expenses; and through these representations
had induced her to curtail her charities, and to lay down her carriage.
This, however, did not suffice, and his representations made the poor
lady miserable with the constant fear of coming poverty. In an agony of
feeling on this subject, she one day sent her confidential servant to
the lawyer to order him to sell her West Indian property. The lawyer
said, “tell your mistress from me, that her West Indian property is not
worth one farthing.” This the servant, whom we took the trouble of
seeing, confirmed to us. The poor woman, haunted with the fear of
poverty, at length took to her bed, and a few days before her death,
when, indeed, her recovery was hopeless, her lawyer appeared at her
bedside, and astounded her with the news, that so far from poverty, her
West Indian property was very large, and her surplus income had actually
accumulated in the funds to the sum of 80,000_l._! and the hypocritical
monster, with a refinement of cruelty perhaps never paralleled, humbly
asked her, “how she would wish it disposed of?” The previous progress of
the poor lady’s illness, and this overwhelming intelligence, rendered
any present disposal impossible. She was thrown into the most fearful
distress of mind,--and continually exclaiming, “O! please God that I
might recover, how different things should be!” died on the third day.
When the will was read, the man who had 5000_l._ left him twenty years
ago, found it left him still; and yet this man had for years lost the
good opinion of the lady by his misconduct, and had not been permitted
to come into her presence for two years. This was a striking proof that
her will had not of late years been adapted to her altered mind. This
man, who first came into the lady’s house as a shoeblack, or some such
thing, and had on one occasion for his misconduct, the alternative
offered him either to quit her service, or be carried up to the top of
the neighbouring fell, on the back of one man and down again, while he
was flogged by another, and was of so base a nature that he had chosen
the flagellation, and continuance in a family where he was regarded with
contempt--this man had now actually purchased the lady’s house of the
executors, and lived in it! We walked past it, and naturally regarding
it with a good deal of curiosity, a ludicrous scene occurred. I suppose,
being strangers, and I having a moreen bag in my hand, it was inferred
from our particular observation of the place, that I was a lawyer, come
down on the behalf of some dissatisfied expectant, to inquire into the
case. However that might be, we presently saw the man’s wife, a very
common-looking person, and appearing wonderfully out of place as the
mistress of such a house, peeping at us from the windows, first on one
side of the house, and then on the other, and at the same time
attempting to screen herself from view by partly unclosing the shutters,
and placing herself behind them. Soon after, her daughter too came with
stealthy steps, out of the back door, crept cautiously round the house,
and posted herself behind a bush to watch us; nor had we advanced far
from the place, when the man himself came hurrying along, and went past
us with very black and inquisitive looks.
We were told that on the will being read, the other executor being now
present, was not more amazed at the fact of his becoming, unknown to
himself, so greatly benefited by it, than he was at the general details
of it. He inquired of the lawyer if the will had been read to the lady
from time to time, in order to see whether it might require some
alteration, and being told by him that it had not, he seemed filled with
the utmost astonishment and indignation, and abruptly said to him--“Why,
there is nothing but damnation for you!” and with that proceeded in such
piercing terms to shew to the lawyer the cruelty and wickedness of his
conduct, that the man trembled through every joint. It was added that
the lawyer “never looked up afterwards,” but was in the greatest
distress of mind, and daily wasted away. That when the tenants of the
property, some time afterwards, went to pay their rents, they found him
propped up in bed with bolsters and pillows, a most pitiable object; his
inkhorn stitched into the bed-quilt by him, and yet his trembling hand
scarcely able to direct his pen into it. That such was the effect of
fear, and the visitings of conscience on his superstitious mind, that he
drank the water which dropped from the church-roof in rainy weather, in
the hope it would do him good!
This is a most extraordinary story, but we found one of these quiet
dales ringing with it from end to end, and this was the account given by
most trustworthy people, who knew the parties well, and one of whom was
the lady’s confidential servant. Amongst the stories which we heard
relating to the past state of these dales, was one of the murder of a
Highland drover, in its particulars bearing a striking resemblance to
the story of Scott’s, told under that title. In Swale Dale is said to be
a race of gipsies, a very fine set of people; and a remarkable account
was given us of one of them, a singularly fine woman in her time, called
Nance of Swaledale.
They have some singular customs in these dales, not yet mentioned. One
is, when a sow litters, they allow her to champ oats out of a beehive to
make the bees lucky; and salt is thrown into the fire, with the same
object, when the bees swarm. Another of their customs arises out of
their spirit of good neighbourhood, and mutual accommodation. In
sheep-shearing time, instead of every one shearing his flock solitarily,
they combine together in troops, and go from farm to farm, till they
have completed the whole, and celebrate the end of their labours at each
house, over a good supper given by the master; in which a sweet pie,
that is, a huge pie of legs of mutton cut small and seasoned with
currants, raisins, candied peel and sugar, and covered with a rich
crust, figures on the board, accompanied by another favourite dish of
fresh fried trout, and collops of ham, succeeded by gooseberry, or as
they call them, berry pasties, and curd cheesecakes, and strong drink in
plenty: a fiddle and a dance concluding the entertainment. The
sheep-washing as well as the shearing is accompanied by this jollity.
In Deepdale, the farmers principally employ themselves at home in
sorting and carding wool for knitting. They call it _welding_; and the
fine locks, selected for the legs of the stockings, they call _leggin_,
whilst the coarser part goes by the name of _footing_. Two old people,
Laurence and Peggy Hodgson o’ Dockensyke, were both upwards of seventy,
when Peggy died. As she lay on her death-bed, she said to her husband,
“Laury, promise me ya thing,--at tou’ill not wed again when I’se gane.”
“Peggy, my lass,” answered Laurence, “do not mak me promise nae sic
thing; tou knaws I’se but young yet.” The old fellow did wed again, and
his brother, on returning from the wedding, made this report of the
bride:--“Why-a, she’s a rough ane. I’se welded her owre and owre, an’ I
canna find a lock o’ leggin in her; she’s a’ footing.”
Here then I close this second chapter of the nooks of the world, bearing
grateful testimony that amongst the virtues of the dales-people,
hospitality and attachment to their pleasant hills and valleys are
pre-eminent. Wherever we went we found them only too happy to shew us
all the beauties of their country, the winding becks, the scars and
waterfalls, and prospects from the loftiest fells. When they had trudged
with us for many a weary mile, through moss and moor, they would hang
the girdle upon the peat-fire, and in a wonderfully short time have
those delicious little kettle-cakes, or as they call them, sad-cakes,
made of pastry, and thickly dotted with currants, smoking on the
tea-table. And when you came in at a late hour, would bring you out
those rural dainties, equally delicious, gooseberry tarts, with curds
and cream. Long may the simple virtues of the Dales remain, while
knowledge in its growth, roots out the more earthly traits of character,
and implants a bolder spirit of enterprise, with the present moral
integrity of mind.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV.
OLD ENGLISH HOUSES.
Our country houses, and especially the older ones, are in themselves an
inestimable national treasure. A thousand endearing associations gather
about them. I cannot conceive a more deeply interesting work than a
history of them which entered fully into the spirit of the times in
which they were raised, and through which they have stood. Which should
give us a view of the national changes which have passed over them;
mighty revolutions, whether abrupt and violent, or slow and silent, in
fortune, in manners, and in mind; and still more, which should, aided by
family paintings, family documents and traditions, unfold their domestic
annals. What an opening up of the human heart would be there! There is
nothing more splendid, or surprising, or fearful, or pathetic, or happy
and fanciful in romance, than would be there discovered. There is no
success, no glory of life and action, no image of princely or baronial
power, no strange freaks of fortune, none of the startling, or the
moving incidents of humanity but have there enrolled themselves. What
noble hearts; what great and pathetic spirits have dwelt at one time or
other in those old places; and then what beautiful and bewitching
creatures have cast through them the sunshine of their presence; have
made them glad with their wit, and their gay fancies, and their strong
affections; or have hallowed them with their sufferings and their
tears. O for the revelation of the fair forms; of the scenes of
successful or sorrowful love; of the bridals and the burials; of the
poetic dreams and pious aspirations, that have warmed or saddened these
old halls through the flight of ages! Much of this is gone for ever;
swept into the black and fathomless gulf of oblivion; but enough might
be recovered to make us wonder at what has passed upon our ancestral
soil, and to make us love it with a still deeper love. There is no
portion of our national history, or point of our national character, but
would be brought into the sweep of such narratives, and receive
illustration from them. Our warriors, statesmen, philosophers, divines,
poets, beauties and heroines more admirable than beauty could make them,
would all figure there.[10] In the galleries of many of these houses,
hang portraits to which traditions are attached that would freeze the
blood, or make it dance with ardour and delight; that would chain up the
listening spirit in breathless attention, in awe and curiosity. In the
very writings by which the estates are secured, in old charters, wills,
and other deeds, facts are traced and changes developed of the most
singular character; and in the oral annals of the families exist
correlative testimonies, which have been imprinted there by the intense
interest of the circumstances themselves.
[10] This was written four years ago. Since then the author has
published the first volume of such a work, under the title of “Visits
to Remarkable Places, Old Halls, Battle Fields, etc.”
How delightful it is to go through those hereditary abodes of ancient
and distinguished families, and to see, in the very construction of
them, images of the past times, and their modes of existence. Here you
pass through ample courts, amid rambling and extensive offices that once
were necessary to the jolly establishment of the age,--for hounds,
horses, hawks, and all their attendants and dependences. Here you come
into vast kitchens, with fireplaces at which three or four oxen might be
roasted at once, with mantelpieces wide as the arch of a bridge, and
chimneys as large as the steeple of a country church. Then you advance
into great halls, where scores of rude revellers have feasted in
returning from battle, or the chase, in the days of feudal running and
riding, of foraying and pilgrimages; of hard knocks and hard lying: ere
tea and coffee had supplanted beef and ale at breakfast; ere books had
charmed away spears and targets, tennis-courts and tourneys, and
political squabbles and parliamentary campaigning, the scouring of
marches, and firing of neighbours’ castles. Then again, you advance into
tapestried chambers, on whose walls mythological or scriptural histories
wrought by the fingers of high-born dames, at once impress you with a
sense of very still and leisurely and woodland times, when Crockford’s
and Almack’s were not; nor the active spirit of civilization had raised
up weavers, and spinners, and artificers of all kinds by thousands on
thousands, by towns-full and cities-full. And now you come to the very
closets and bowers of the ladies themselves--scenes of worn and faded
splendour, but shewing enough of their original state to mark their wide
difference from the silken boudoirs and luxurious dormitories of the
fair dames of this age of swarming and busy artisans; of ample rents and
city life; instead of hunting and fighting, of wars in the heart of
France, or civil wars at home, to call out the heads of houses, or
perhaps drive their families forth with fire and sword in their absence.
Then there is the antique chapel, and the library; the one having, in
most cases, been deserted by its ancient faith, the other still bearing
testimony to the range of reading of our old squires and nobles, since
reading became a part of their education, in a few grim folios,--a
Bible, a Gwillim’s Heraldry, one or two of our Chroniclers, and a few
Latin Classics or Fathers, for the enjoyment of the chaplain.
But the armoury and the great gallery--these are the places in which a
flood of historic light pours in upon you, and the spirit of the past is
made so palpable, that you forget your real existence in this
utilitarian century; you forget reform in all its shapes--ballot,
household suffrage, triennial parliaments; you forget the cry of the
church and king; and the counter-cry from a million of eager voices, for
liberty of hearth and faith; you forget that all around you, from the
very walls that surround you to the distant sea, is nothing but fields
cultivated like gardens, secured by gates and fences, and tenfold more
costly and powerful parchment, to their particular owners; you forget
that towns stand by hundreds, and villages by thousands, filled with a
busy, an inquisitive, a reading, thinking, aspiring and irresistible
population; and that all the institutions, the opinions, the loves and
doings of the times when these things before you were matters of
familiar life, are gone, or are going, for ever: that,
Another race has been, and other palms are won.
Yes, mighty and impressive as these things are; deeply as they visit
your daily thought and nightly dreams; woven as they are with the thread
of your existence, and your hopes and belief of the future ages,--yes,
potent as they are, they vanish for a time. Here are swords, helmets,
coats of mail, and plate-armour standing up in its own massiveness;
shells from which the active bodies which moved them, have long ago
disappeared. Here are buff-coats, ponderous boots, and huge spurs; broad
hats, with sweeping feathers, and chains of gold, crosses and amulets,
which make the past for ever in time, the past for ever in spirit, come
back again with a vivid and intoxicating effect. You gaze upon arms and
relics which figured in all the battles and pilgrimages, the desperate
strifes and extravagant pageants of our ancestors; you behold things
which link your fancies to all the romantic ages of European history.
You forget the present; and exist amid forests, the stern strength of
castles and the venerable quiet of convents. You are ready to listen to
the distant bell of the abbey; for news of the crusaders; you expect as
you ride through the woods, to stumble upon the abode of the hermit.
These arms and fragments before you, were in the battles of Cressy and
Poictiers; in the wars of the Roses; in the Tourney of the Field of
Cloth-of-Gold; that mail, on the back of some stout knight, climbed over
the ramparts of Ascalon, or of Jerusalem itself; and those, bringing you
down the stream of events, are the equipments of Cavaliers and of
Puritan leaders, when the spirit of feudalism and that of progression
came so rudely into strife as to shake the kingdom like an earthquake.
You step into the gallery, and there are the very men whose iron
habiliments you have been contemplating; there are the rude portraitures
of the warriors of an earlier day; and there are the Sidneys, the
Howards, the Essexes and Leicesters, the Warwicks and Wiltons, of an
after one; the men that set up and pulled down kings, that waded through
the blood of others, or that poured out their own, for honour and
liberty. You have read of some handsome and gallant knight who wrought
some chivalric miracle, who perhaps died in its performance--he is
there! You have glowed over the accounts of arrogant and fascinating
beauties, who turned the heads of kings and nobles--they are there!
worthy of all their fame, their very shadows filling you with sighs and
dreams of loveliness, which will haunt you in the open sunshine, and
amid all the cheerful sounds of present life.
But it is not merely these great historic characters. There are family
ones that constitute a history amongst themselves, most interesting and
touching. There are the founders of those families. There is the great
minister, who once rose to the favour of his sovereign, and swayed the
destinies of the kingdom; there is the great churchman, that climbed up
from plebeian obscurity to the primacy; there is the judge, who, from a
younger brother of an ancient line, became the fortunate founder of a
new one; there are admirals, generals, and nobles, who have figured in
the campaigns of every reign. There are stern forms that were despots in
their own sphere, or calm and smiling faces that have such blots and
dark passages attached to them as confound all your physiognomical
acuteness; and there are beautiful and gentle-looking creatures, that
are most strangely tainted with blood; noble matrons, who knew sorrows
for which neither their rank and affluence, no, nor the possessions of
ten kingdoms could make recompense; and lastly, there are young boys and
girls, that look on you with most innocent archness or open good-nature,
which perished like blossoms ere fully opened, or lived to make you
shudder over their remembrance.
Such are many of our older houses, to say nothing of later and more
splendid ones; nothing of all the modern attractions that have been
added to their ancient ones; nothing of those sumptuous places which our
nobility have raised on their estates, and filled with all the luxurious
adornments of modern life, and with the wealth of art. And then those
houses stand scattered over all the kingdom, in fine old parks, in
gardens of quaint alleys and topiary work; or in the freer beauty of
modern lawns and shrubberies; objects of pleasure and pride to thousands
beside their own possessors.
Horace Walpole wished that they were all collected in London, and then
should we have had such a capital as the world could not boast. Heaven
forgive him for the wish! A splendid capital no doubt we should have
had, but we should not have had such a country, such a people, such a
national strength and character as we have. It is by living scattered
through the realm, amid their own people, their own lands and woods,
that our gentry have retained such high independence of principle, and
such healthy tastes as they have done. It is by this means that
agriculture, and horticulture, and rural architecture, have been
promoted to the extent they have reached; that the whole kingdom has
become a paradise, and that the people have been linked to the interests
of their superiors. We have only too many temptations already to a
crowding into our capital. A city life to a wealthy aristocracy must
become a life of luxury and splendour, a life of dissipation and
rivalry. The enjoyments of society, of music, and of public spectacles,
at intervals, might refine the taste; but when this species of life
becomes almost perpetual, its certain consequence must be to deteriorate
and effeminate character; to weaken the domestic attachments; to divert
from, or disincline for that sober thought and those studies which lead
to greatness, or leave behind solid satisfaction. We have already too
much of this, and its effect will daily become more and more
conspicuous, as it is of more and more vital importance. Now, while the
people are struggling to acquire possession of rights that they long
knew not their claim to; now that they are growing informed, and
therefore quick to see and to feel--those on whom they look as their
natural and powerful rivals, are living at a distance from them; taking
no means to conciliate their good-will, or to retain their esteem. Their
humble neighbours feel no effect from their estates except the
withdrawal of their rents; and they ask themselves what claim these
people, who are living in our great Babylon,
Minions of splendour, shrinking from distress,--
have upon their veneration or regard. Is it not in these noble ancestral
houses, amid their ancestral woods and lands, that the spirit of our
gentry is most likely to acquire a right tone? Here, where they are
surrounded by objects and memories of worth, of greatness and renown,
that the fire of a generous and glorious emulation is most likely to be
kindled; and that all the best feelings of their nature are likely to be
touched, and their best affections quickened? Even Horace Walpole
himself furnishes an instance in proof. Little as he had of the pensive
and poetical in him, his visit to the family place at Houghton called up
such thoughts and emotions as, if encouraged instead of avoided, might
have made him aware of higher qualities in himself than he was
habitually accustomed to display. “Here am I,” says he in one of his
letters, “at Houghton! and alone; in this spot where, except two hours
last month, I have not been in sixteen years! Think what a crowd of
reflections! No!--Gray and forty churchyards could not furnish so many;
nay, I know one must feel them with greater indifference than I possess,
to have patience to put them into verse. Here I am, probably for the
last time in my life, though not for the last time; every clock that
strikes tells me that I am one hour nearer to yonder church,--that
church into which I have not yet had courage to enter; where lies the
mother on whom I doated, and who doated on me! There are the two rival
mistresses of Houghton, neither of whom ever wished to enjoy it. There
too lies he who founded its greatness; to contribute to whose fall,
Europe was embroiled. There he sleeps in quiet and dignity, while his
friend and his foe, rather his false ally and real enemy, Newcastle and
Bath, are exhausting the dregs of their pitiful lives in squabbles and
pamphlets.
“The surprise the pictures gave me is again renewed. Accustomed for many
years to see wretched daubs and varnished copies at auctions, I look at
these as enchantment.... A party arrived just as I did, to see the
house: a man and three women, in riding dresses, and they rode fast
through the apartments. I could not hurry before them fast enough; they
were not so long in seeing for the first time, as I could have been in
one room, to examine what I knew by heart. I remember formerly being
often diverted by this kind of _seers_; they come, ask what such a room
is called, in which Sir Robert lay: admire a lobster, or a cottage in a
market-piece; dispute whether the last room was green or purple; and
then hurry to the inn, for fear the fish should be overdressed. How
different my situation! Not a picture here but recals a history; not one
but I remember in Downing-street, or Chelsea, where queens and crowds
admired them, though seeing them as little as these travellers.
“When I had drank tea I strolled into the garden. They told me it was
now called the _pleasure-ground_. What a dissonant idea of pleasure!
Those groves, those _alleys_, where I have passed so many charming
moments, are now stripped up, or overgrown; many fond paths I could not
unravel, though with a very exact clue in my memory. I met two
gamekeepers, and a thousand hares! In the days when all my soul was
tuned to pleasure and vivacity, I hated Houghton and its solitude;
yet I loved this garden; as now, with many regrets, I love
Houghton;--Houghton, I know not what to call it: a monument of grandeur
or ruin! How I wished this evening for Lord Bute! How I could preach to
him!--The servants wanted to lay me in the great apartment--what! to
make me pass the night as I had done my evening! It were like proposing
to Margaret Roper to be a duchess in the court which cut off her
father’s head, and imagining it could please her. I have chosen to sit
in my father’s little dressing-room, and am now in his escritoire,
where, in the height of his fortune, he used to receive the accounts of
his farmers, and deceive himself, or us, with the thoughts of his
economy. How wise a man, at once, and how weak! For what has he built
Houghton? For his grandson to annihilate, or his son to mourn over.”
_Horace Walpole’s Letters_, vol. ii. pp. 227-8.
Having made these preliminary observations, I will now give a specimen
or two from my native neighbourhood, because necessarily more familiar
with them; let every reader throughout England look round him in his,
and he will find others as interesting there.
CHAPTER V.
HARDWICK HALL.
Mrs. Jameson has lately given a very vivid and charming account of this
fine old place. I am not going to tread in her steps, but to describe
the impression it made upon myself at different times, in my own way,
and with reference to my own object.
My first visit to it was when I was a youth of about seventeen. I had
heard nothing at all of it, and had no idea that it was an object of any
particular interest. I was at Mansfield, and casually heard that the
present Duke of Devonshire, its proprietor, was come of age, and that
there, as at his other houses, his birth-day was to be kept by his
tenants and the neighbouring peasantry in the old English style. The
house lies about five miles to the north of Mansfield, not far from the
Chesterfield road. I set off, and learning that there was a footway, I
passed through one or two quiet, old-fashioned villages, through
solitary fields and deep woody valleys, a road that for its beauty and
out-of-the-world air delighted me exceedingly. I at length found myself
at the entrance of a large old park. The tall towers of the hall had
been my landmarks all the way, and now that unique building, standing on
the broad, level plain, surrounded at a distance by the old oaks of the
park, burst upon me with an unexpected effect. It was unlike anything I
had seen; but there were solemn halls in the regions of poetry and
romance, that my imagination immediately classed it amongst. I advanced
toward it with indescribable feelings of wonder and delight. I could
have wished that it had been standing in its ordinary solitude, for
that seemed to my mind its true and natural state; but it was not so:
around it swarmed crowds of rustic revellers, and I determined to take
things as I found them; to consider this very scene as a feature of the
olden time; and to see how it went, about the baronial dwellings in the
feudal ages, on occasions like that.
It was not long before I came upon a man lying on his face under the
trees,--he was dead drunk. Soon I passed another, and another, and
another: a little farther, and they lay about like the slain on the
outskirts of a battle. When I came into the open plain before the hall,
the sound of a band of music which had probably been some time silent
through the musicians themselves dining, reached me; I heard drunken
songs and wild outcries mingling with it. All about the lawn were
scattered clustered throngs. I saw barrels standing; spigots running;
men catching their hats full, and running here and there, while others
were snatching at their prize, and often spilling the ale on the ground.
Sometimes there were two or three trying to drink out of a hat at once;
others were stooping down to drink at the spigots; there were fighting,
scuffling, clamour, and confusion. All round the hall people swarmed
like bees. At the doors and gates dense masses were trying to force
their way in; while stout fellows were thumping away at their sculls
with huge staves, with an energy that one would have thought enough to
kill them by dozens, but which seemed to make little impression.
While this was going on, being a slim youth, I slipped beneath the
uplifted arm of a stout yeoman, and made a safe ingress. I stood
astonished at the place into which I had entered. Those ample and lofty
rooms, in which stood huge pieces of roast-beef on huge pewter dishes,
and great leathern jacks, tankards, and modern jugs of ale, at which
scores of people were eating and drinking as voraciously as if they had
been fasting all the one-and-twenty years to do due honour to this great
birth-day; while the servants were running to and fro, filling up
foaming measures, which were emptied again with wonderful rapidity.
Those vast kitchens too, with their mighty fireplaces, and tongs, and
pokers, and spits fit for the kitchen of Polyphemus; with broiling cooks
and hurrying menials, called on by twenty voices at once. I made my way
to the front court, where, under canvass awnings, long tables were set
out for the tenantry and yeomanry of the neighbourhood, admitted by
ticket. O what a company of jolly, rosy, full-grown, well-fed fellows,
was there, making no sham onset on the plum-pudding and roast-beef of
Old England! The band kept up a triumphant din; but when it ceased for a
moment, what a rattle of knives and forks, and a clatter of ale-cups,
what a clamour of tongues and hearty laughter became perceptible! And
all round the court, the walls were covered with swarms of men, that
climbed up no trivial height to get a view of the jovial banquet, and
many a cry was raised to throw up thither some of those good things. And
sure enough, here went a piece of beef, and here a lump of pudding; and
a score of hands caught at them; and a hundred voices joined in the roar
of laughter as they were caught, or fell back again into the court, or
flew over the wall amongst the scrambling crowd.
But suddenly there was in the midst of all this noise and jollity, a cry
of horror; and it was soon seen that one of the pointed stones that
stand at intervals on the top of the high wall all round the court, had
disappeared. It had given way with a man who clung to it, had fallen
upon him, and killed him on the spot. There was a momentary pause in the
festivity; a great running together to the spot of the catastrophe; but
the body was soon conveyed away to an outbuilding, and the tide of riot
rolled on. It was doomed, however, to receive a second check; for
another man, in the wild excitement of the time, and of the strong ale,
sprang at one bound over a wall that stood on the edge of a precipice,
and fell a shattered corpse into the hollow below. These were awful
events, and cast over some of the revellers a gloom that would not
disperse; but far the greater part were now too highly charged with
birth-day ale to be capable of reflection. All around was Bacchanalian
chaos. Singing, shouting, attempts at dancing, reeling, and tumbling.
Bodies lay thickly strewn through court and hall, and far around on the
lawn. Some gay sparks were, with mock respect, carried with much
struggling and laughter, and laid in sheds and stables and under trees,
and one especial dandy was deposited in a heap of soot. For myself,
perhaps the only sober person there, I hastened away, resolving to
revisit that fairy mansion in the time of its restored quiet.
And in what a far different aspect did it present itself when I next saw
it; and with what a far different company did I witness it! It was on
one of the most glorious days of a splendid summer that we passed under
the shadow of its oaks, as happy and attached a company as ever met on
earth. Ah! they are all dispersed now! Out of a dozen glad hearts, not
more than three are living now. But let me forget that. We were a joyful
band of tried friends then. All, except myself and a young Yorkshire
damsel, light as a sylph, and lovely and frolic as a fairy, were in
carriages; we were on horseback; and scarcely had we entered the park,
when, as if the sight of its fine wide level had filled her with an
irresistible desire to scour across it, the madcap gave her horse the
rein, and darted away. Under the boughs of the oaks she stooped, and
flew along with arrowy swiftness. Every moment I expected to see her
caught by one of them, and dashed to the ground; but she was too
practised a horsewoman for that: she cleared the trees; the deer bounded
away as she came galloping towards them, and turned and gazed at her
from a distance; the rooks and daws, and lapwings feeding on the turf,
soared up and raised wild cries; but she sped on, and there was nothing
for me to do but to follow. I spurred forwards, but it was only to see
her rush, at the same reckless speed, down a deep descent, where one
trip of her horse--and nothing was more likely--and she would have flown
far over his head to certain death. Yet down she went, and down I
followed; but ere I reached the bottom, she was urging her horse up as
steep an ascent, on whose summit, as I approached it, I found her seated
on her panting steed, laughing at her exploit and my face of wonder.
When we reached the Hall, there were all our friends in the court, and
the kind-hearted old gentleman, the head of the party, standing at the
great hall door, laughing heartily at the attempts of each of the
youngsters in succession to walk blindfold up a single row of the flags
that lead from the court-gates to the house. Every one began full of
confidence; but the laughter and cries of the rest soon proclaimed the
failure of the enterprise. When it came to the turn of our merry madcap,
up she walked with a bold step, and course as strait as if guided by a
clue, from gate to door. All at once exclaimed that she could see, and
busy hands were soon at work to fasten the handkerchief so artfully
round her head, that she could not possibly get a glimpse of daylight.
Again she was led to the gate, and again she marched up to the door as
quickly and directly as before. The wonder was great; but still it was
asserted that she _must_ see;--it was that fine Grecian nose of hers
that permitted a glance down beside it, enough for the guidance of the
spirited damsel; so handkerchief was bound on handkerchief, aslant and
athwart, to exclude every possibility of seeing; and again she was set
at the gate; and again went gaily and confidently to the door without
one erring footstep. There was a general murmur of applause and wonder.
I see that light and buoyant figure still advancing up the line of
flags; I see those golden locks dancing in the sunshine as she went; I
see that lovely countenance, those blue and laughing eyes, full of a
merry triumph, as her friends unbound her beautiful head. I see the same
glad creature, all vivacity and happiness, now sitting on the warm turf,
now bounding up long flights of stairs; now standing, to the terror of
her companions, on the jutting edge of a ruinous tower;--and can it be
true, that that fairy creature has long been dead! the light of those
lovely eyes extinguished! those lovely locks soiled with the damp
churchyard earth! Alas! we know too well how readily such things come to
pass. But no black presage came before us then. All around was summer
sunshine; we explored every nook in that old ivied ruin, the older house
of Hardwick, in which the Queen of Scots was confined; paced the
celebrated banqueting-room, adorned with the figures of Gog and Magog,
with an angel flying between them with a drawn sword. We rambled over
the leaden roof, and in the happy folly of youth, marked each other’s
foot upon it, with duly inscribed names and date. We went all through
the present house; through its tapestried rooms, along its gallery, into
its ancient chapel, and up to its armoury, a tower on the roof; and
finally adjourned to the neat little inn at Glapwell, to a merry tea,
and thence home.
My next visit to Hardwick was in the autumn of 1834. My companions now
were, my true associate for the last seventeen years, and one little boy
and girl, who, as we advanced up the park, rambled on before us in eager
delight. Twenty years had passed since that youthful party I have just
mentioned was there;--twenty years to me of many sober experiences; of
naturally extended knowledge; of observation of our old English houses
in various parts of the kingdom: but as I once more approached Hardwick,
I felt that it had lost none of its effect,--nay, that that effect was
actually increased: it was more unworldly, more unlike any thing else,
or any thing belonging to common life; more poetical, more crowned and
overshadowed with beautiful and solemn associations, than it was when I
first beheld it in my youth. The distance you have to advance, from the
moment you emerge from amongst the trees of the park into a full view of
the Hall, until you reach it, tends greatly to heighten its effect.
There it stands, bold and alone, on a wide unobstructed plain.
No trees crowd upon it, or break, for a moment, the view; it lifts
itself up in all its solemn and unique grandeur to the blue heavens,
like a fairy palace, in the days of old romance. It is a thing expressly
of by-gone times--darkened indeed by age, but not injured. Unlike modern
mansions, you see no bustle of human life about it; no gardens and
shrubberies; but wings of grey, and not very high walls, extending
to a considerable distance over the plain, from each end of the
house, inclosing what gardens there are, and paddocks. You see
no offices appended,--it seems a place freed from all mortal
necessities,--inhabited by beings above them. All offices, in fact, that
are not included within the regular walls of the house, are removed to a
considerable distance with the farm-yard. As you draw near, its grave
aspect strikes you more strongly; you become more sensible of its
loftiness, of the vast size of its windows, and of that singular parapet
which surmounts it. It is an oblong building, with three square towers
at each end, both projecting from, and rising much higher than, the body
of the building. The parapet surmounting these towers is a singular
piece of open-work of sweeping lines of stone, displaying the initials
of the builder, E. S.--Elizabeth Shrewsbury,--surmounted with the
coronet of an earl. On all sides of the house these letters and crown
strike your eye, and the whole parapet appears so unlike what is usually
wrought in stone, that you cannot help thinking that its singular
builder, old Bess of Hardwick, must have cut out the pattern in paper
with her scissars. It is difficult to say, whether this remarkable
woman had a greater genius for architecture or matrimony. She was the
daughter of John Hardwick of Hardwick, and sole heiress of this estate.
She married four times, always contriving to get the power over her
husband’s estates, by direct demise, or by intermarrying the children of
their former marriages with those of former husbands, so that she
brought into the family immense estates, and laid the foundation of four
dukedoms. Her genius for architecture is sufficiently conspicuous in
this unique pile, and in the engraving of Worksop Manor in Thoroton’s
Nottinghamshire, as erected by her, though since destroyed by fire,--a
building full of the same peculiar character. It is said that it having
been foretold her by some astrologer, that the moment she ceased to
build would be the moment of her death, she was perpetually engaged in
building. At length, as she was raising a set of almshouses at Derby, a
severe frost set in. All measures were resorted to necessary to enable
the men to continue their work: their mortar was dissolved with hot
water, and when that failed, with hot ale; but the frost triumphed--the
work ceased, and Bess of Hardwick expired! This noble building I trust
will long continue to perpetuate her memory, lifting aloft on its
parapet her conspicuous E. S.
All the lower walls surrounding the courts and paddocks, are finished
with similar open-work of bands of curved and knotted stone. A colonnade
runs along each side of the house between the projecting towers, and the
entrance-front is enclosed by that court of which I have already spoken;
having its walls mounted, at intervals, with quaint pyramidal stones. On
this side of the house a fine valley opens itself, filled with noble
woods, a large water, and displaying beyond a hilly and pleasant
country.
At about a hundred yards from the Hall stand the remains of the old one.
The progress of dilapidation upon this building, since my last visit,
was striking. Then you could ascend to the leaden roof; but now means
were adopted to prevent that, on account of its unsafe state; in fact,
the stairs themselves have partly fallen in; many of the floors of the
rooms have fallen through; the ceiling of the celebrated banqueting-room
itself has given way by places, and in others is propped up by stout
pieces of timber. The glory of Gog and Magog will soon be annihilated,
or they will be left on the walls, exposed to the astonished gaze of the
passer-by, as are some stucco alto-relievoes of stags under forest
trees on the chamber walls, with ivy drooping over them from the top of
the walls above, and tall trees that have sprung on the hearths of
destroyed rooms below, waving before them. This is the outward aspect of
those old halls where Mary Stuart, and the almost equally unfortunate
Arabella Stuart, once dwelt. Within, the present hall is as perfect a
specimen of an Elizabethan house, as can be wished. “The state
apartments are lofty and spacious, with numerous transom windows
admitting a profusion of light. The hall is hung with very curious
tapestry, which appears to be as ancient as the fifteenth century. On
one part of it, is a representation of boar-hunting, and on another of
otter-hunting. In the chapel, which is on the first floor, is a very
rich and curious altar-cloth, thirty feet long, hung round the rails of
the altar, with figures of saints under canopies wrought in needlework.
The great dining-room is on the same floor, over the chimney-piece of
which are the arms of the Countess of Shrewsbury, with the date of 1597.
The most remarkable apartments in this interesting edifice are the state
room, or room of audience, as it is called, and the gallery. The former
is sixty-four feet nine inches, by thirty-three feet, and twenty-six
feet four inches high. At one end of it is a canopy of state, and in
another part a bed, the hangings of which are very ancient. This room is
hung with tapestry, in which is represented the story of Ulysses; over
this are figures, rudely executed in plaster, in bas-relief, amongst
which is a representation of Diana and her nymphs. The gallery is about
170 feet long and 26 wide, extending the whole length of the eastern
side of the house; and hung with tapestry, on a part of which is the
date of 1478.”[11] The house has not only been kept in repair, but
exactly in the state in which its builder left it, as to furniture and
fitting up, with a very few exceptions, and these in the most accordant
taste. For instance, the Duke of Devonshire has brought hither his
family pictures from Chatsworth, so as to make this fine gallery the
family picture gallery. Not another painting has been suffered to enter.
He has also now added a most appropriate feature to the entrance hall, a
statue of the Queen of Scots, of the size of life, by Westmacott. It
stands on a pedestal of the same stone, bearing an armorial escutcheon.
[11] Lyson’s Magna Britannia.
Mrs. Jameson expresses strongly the effect of the huge escutcheons, the
carved arms thrust out from the wall, intended to hold lights, and the
great antlers, as she first entered this hall by night; but what would
have been the effect of seeing Mary Stuart herself standing full
opposite, as if to receive her to this place of her former
captivity.[12] To her, and to every imaginative person, the effect must
have been powerful, and solemnly impressive. Gray the poet, instead of
thinking that the Queen of Scots had but just walked down into the park
for half an hour, would have seen her visibly here. I have seen the
portraits of Queen Mary, both here and in Holyrood, but none of them
give me a thousandth part of the idea of what she must have been,
compared with this statue.
[12] I do not mean literally that this house was the place of her
captivity, it was the old one.
With these two exceptions, both of which tend to strengthen the
legitimate influence of the place, all besides is exactly as it was. You
ascend the broad, easy oak stairs; you see the chapel by their side,
with all its brocaded seats and cushions; you advance along vast
passages, where stand huge chests filled with coals, and having ample
crypts in the walls for chips and firewood. Here are none of the modern
contrivances to conceal these things; but they stand there before you,
with an air of rude abundance, according well with the ancient mixture
of baronial state and simplicity. You go on and on, through rooms all
hung with rich old tapestry, glowing with pictorial scenes from
scriptural or mythological history; all furnished with antique cabinets,
massy tables, high chairs covered with crimson velvet or ornamental
satin. You behold the very furniture used by Queen Mary; the very bed
she worked with her own fingers. But perhaps that spacious gallery,
extending along the whole front of the house, gives the imagination a
more feudal feeling than all. Its length, nearly two hundred feet; its
great height; its stupendous windows, composing nearly the whole front,
rattling and wailing as the wind sweeps along them. What a magnificent
sough, and even thunder of sound, must fill that wild old place in
stormy weather. There you see arranged, high and low, portraits of most
of the characters belonging to the family or history of the place, of
all degrees of execution. It is not my intention to give any details,
either of those or of the furniture; that having been done by Mrs.
Jameson with the accuracy and feeling that particularly distinguish her.
I aim only at imparting the general effect. It is enough therefore to
say that there are “many beautiful women and brave men:” portraits of
bluff Harry VIII.; those of the rival queens, Mary and Elizabeth; her
keeper, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and his masculine wife, Elizabeth of
Hardwick; and the philosophers, Boyle and Hobbs. One interesting
particular of Mrs. Jameson’s statement, however, we could not
verify:--the tradition of the nocturnal meeting of the rival queens in
the gallery. We never heard of it before; nor could we now find, by the
most particular inquiries, even among the domestics, any knowledge of
such a tradition. It was as new to them as to us; and we therefore set
it down as a pleasant poetical tradition of the fair author’s own
planting.
The Duke was come hither from Chatsworth, to spend a week, and he seemed
to have come in the spirit befitting the place; for there was scarcely
more than its usual establishment; scarcely less than its usual
quietness perceptible. The Duke himself we had met on the road, and in
his absence were shewn through the apartments which he uses on these
occasions; and it had a curious effect amid all this staid and sombre
antiquity, to find, on a plain oak table in the library, the newspapers
of the day; the Athenæum, Court Journal, the Spectator, and Edinburgh
Review; the works of Dr. Channing; and Hood’s Tylney Hall, just then
published. What an antithesis! what a mighty contrast between the spirit
of the past and the present!--the life and stir of the politics and the
passing literature of the day, in a place belonging in history,
character, and all its appointments, to an age so different, and so long
gone by, with all its people and concerns.
Nothing, perhaps, could mark more vividly the vast changes in the
manners and circumstances of different ages in England; the wonderful
advance in luxury and refinement of the modern ones, than by passing
from Hardwick to the old Hall of Haddon, built in 1427, when the feudal
system was in its strength; when the manor-house was but one remove from
the castle; to visit this with its rude halls, its massive tables, its
floors made from the planks of one mighty oak, its ancient arras and
quaint stucco-work; and then pass over to Chatsworth, only a few miles
distant, where to the past all the splendour of the present has been
added; modern architecture, and all its contrivances for domestic
convenience, comfort, and elegance; pictures, statuary, books,
magnificent furniture, glowing carpets; every thing that the art,
wealth, and ingenuity of this great nation can bring together into one
princely mansion. But as my limits will not admit of this, I shall
content myself with a survey of a more domestic kind, yet connected with
the poetical history of our own day--Annesley and Newstead.
CHAPTER VI.
ANNESLEY HALL AND HUCKNALL.
Early in the spring of 1834, I walked over with Charles Pemberton from
Nottingham, to see Annesley Hall, the birth-place and patrimony of Mary
Chaworth; a place made of immortal interest by the early attachment of
Lord Byron to this lady, and by the graphic strength and deep passion
with which he has recorded in his poems this most influential
circumstance of his youth.
Annesley lies about nine miles north of Nottingham, itself--the scene of
his first and most lasting attachment--Newstead, his patrimonial
abode--and Hucknall, his burial-place; forming the three points of a
triangle, each of whose sides may be about two miles in length. Yet,
although Newstead and Hucknall have been visited by shoals of admirers,
this place, perhaps altogether the most interesting of the three, has
been wholly neglected. Few, or none of them, have thought it worth while
to go so little out of their way to see it; perhaps not one in a hundred
has known that it was so near; probably to those who inquired about it,
it might be replied, “you see that wooded ridge--there lies Annesley.
You see all that is worth seeing; it is a poor tumble-down place:” and
so they have been satisfied, and have returned in their wisdom to their
own place, at a hundred, or a thousand, miles distance. But what is
still more remarkable, while Mr. Murray has sent down an artist into
this neighbourhood to make drawings of Hucknall church and Newstead for
his Life and Poems of Lord Byron; and while others have encompassed sea
and land to give us thrice reiterated landscapes illustrative of his
biography and writings, and have even presented us with fictitious
portraits of the most interesting characters connected with his
fortunes,--they have totally passed over Annesley as altogether unworthy
of their notice, though it is a spot, at once, full of a melancholy
charm; of a sad, yet old English beauty; a spot, where every sod, and
stone, and tree, and hearth, is rife with the most strange and touching
memories in human existence; and where the genuine likeness of Mary
Chaworth, in the most lovely and happy moments of her life, is to be
found.
Need I pause a moment to account for this? Does not the discerning
public always tread in one track? As sheep follow one leader, and
traverse the heath in a long extended line, so does the public follow
the first trumpeter of the praises of one place. It has been fashionable
to visit Newstead, and it _has_ been visited;--but as Annesley was not
at first thought of, it has not been visited at all. Well! we have
visited it; and if there be any power in the most melancholy of mortal
fortunes--in the retracing the day-dreams of an illustrious spirit--in
the gathering of all English feelings round the strongest combination of
the glories of nature, with the aspect of decay in the fortunes and
habitation of an ancient race, we shall visit it again and again.[13]
[13] Since this was published in the Athenæum in the autumn of 1834,
Washington Irving has published his interesting visit to Newstead and
_Annesley_.
That wooded ridge was our landmark from the first step of our journey,
and we soon reached Hucknall. The approach to Hucknall is pleasant; the
place itself is a long and unpicturesque village. Count Gamba is said to
have been struck with its resemblance to Missolonghi. Sixteen years have
now passed since the funeral of Lord Byron took place here, and yet it
seems to me but as yesterday. His admirers, in after ages, will
naturally picture to themselves the church, on that occasion,
overflowing with the intelligent and poetical part of the population of
the neighbourhood. A poet who had spent a good deal of his boyhood and
youth in it--whose patrimonial estate lay here--who had gone hence, and
won so splendid a renown--whose life had been a series of circumstances
and events as striking and romantic as his poetry--who had finally been
cut down in his prime, in so brilliant an attempt to restore the
freedom and ancient glory of Greece--would naturally be supposed to come
back to the tomb of his ancestors, amidst the confluence of a thousand
strongly-excited hearts. But it was not so. There was a considerable
number of persons present, but the church was by no means crowded, and
the spectators were, with very few exceptions, of that class which is
collected, by idle curiosity on the approach of any not very wonderful
procession; who would have collected to gaze as much at the funeral of
his lordship’s grandfather, or his own, though he had not written a line
of poetry, or lifted the sword of freedom;--probably, with threefold
eagerness at that of a wealthy cit, because there would have been more
of bustle and assuming blazonry about it. With the exception of the
undertaker’s hired company; of Sir John Cam Hobhouse, and his lordship’s
attorney, Mr. Hanson; his Greek servant Tita, and his old follower
Fletcher, the rest of the attendants were the villagers, and a certain
number of people from Nottingham, of a similar class, and led by similar
motives. There was not a score of those who are called “the respectable”
from Nottingham; scarcely one of the gentry of the county. This strange
fact can only be accounted for by the circumstance that Nottingham and
its vicinity are famous for the manufacture of lace and stockings, but,
like many other manufacturing districts, possess no such decided
attachment to literature. Many readers there are, undoubtedly, in both
town and country, but readers chiefly for pastime--for the filling up of
a certain space between and after business--and a laudable way too of so
filling it; but not readers from any unconquerable passion for, or
attachment to, literature for its own sake. A few literary persons have
lived in or about the neighbourhood, but these are the exception; the
character of the district is manufacturing and political, but by no
means literary, nor ever was; therefore, the strongest feeling with
which Lord Byron was regarded there, was a political one. Though an
aristocrat in birth and bearing, he was a very thorough radical in
principle. Hence, he had only the sympathy of the radicals with him,
those consisting chiefly of the working classes. The whigs of the town
and the gentry of the county, chiefly tories, regarded him only in a
political light, and paid him not the respect of their presence.
The religious world had a high prejudice against him for his manifold
sins of speech, opinion, and life; they of course were not there. No
party had so much more admiration of genius--conception of the lofty,
intellectual achievements of the noble poet, discernment of the abundant
qualifying, and, in fact, overbalancing grace and beauty, and even
religious sentiment, which breathed through many of his writings--for no
man had more ennobling and truly religious feelings rooted in his soul
by the contemplation of the magnificence of God’s handiworks in
creation; or felt occasionally, more deeply the spiritualizing influence
that pervades nature;--no party had so much more of this tone of mind,
than of their political or sectarian bias, as to forget all those minor
things in his wonderful talent--his early death--his redeeming
qualities, and last deeds--and the honour he had conferred, as an
everlasting heritage, on this country.
In the evening, after the people who had attended the funeral were
dispersed, I went down to the church and entered the vault. There was a
reporter from one of the London newspapers copying the inscriptions on
the coffins by the light of a lamp; and a great hobble-de-hoy of a
farmer’s lad was kneeling on the case that contained the poet’s heart,
and lolling on the coffin with his elbows, as he watched the reporter,
in a manner that indicated the most perfect absence of all thought of
the place where he was, or the person on whose remains he was perched.
In the churchyard, a group of the villagers were eagerly discussing the
particulars of the funeral, and the character of the deceased. One man
attempted to account for the apparently indifferent manner in which the
clergyman performed the burial service, by his having understood that he
felt himself disgraced by having to bury an atheist. “An atheist!”
exclaimed an old woman, “tell me that he was an atheist! D’ ye think an
atheist would be beloved by his servants as this man was? Why, they fret
themselves almost to death about him. And d’ ye think they would have
made so much of him in foreign parts? Why, they almost worshipped him as
a god in Grecia!” giving the final _a_ a sound almost as long as one’s
finger. This was conclusive--the wondering auditors had nothing to
reply--they quietly withdrew their several ways, and I mine.
The church was broken into soon after the funeral, and the black cloth
with which the pulpit was hung on this occasion, carried away: and this
is not the only forcible entry that has been made through Lord Byron’s
being buried there; for the clerk told me, that when Moore came to see
it with Colonel Wildman, being impatient of the clerk’s arrival, who
lives at some distance, the poet had contrived to climb up to a window,
open it, and get in, where the worthy bearer of the keys found him, to
his great astonishment.
The indifference shewn by the people of Nottingham towards the great
poet, would not seem to have abated, if we are to judge by the entries
in an album kept by the clerk, and which was presented for that purpose
about twelve years ago by Dr. Bowring. The signatures of visiters in
1834 amounted to upwards of eight hundred, amongst which appear the
names of people from North and South America, Russia, the Indies, and
various other distant places and countries, but few from Nottingham or
its shire, who might be supposed to be amongst the best read and best
informed portion of its population. This, however, must be allowed, that
the names entered in the clerk’s book afford no just criterion of the
number or quality of the visiters to the poet’s tomb, as many of the
most poetical and refined minds might naturally feel reluctant to place
their signatures in such a medley of mawkish sentiment as is always
found in such albums. A few clergymen, we, however, were pleased to see,
had there placed their names; and some dissenting ministers had ventured
so far as to do likewise, and to preach some pretty little sermons over
him in the book, which opens thus:
TO THE
Immortal and Illustrious Fame
OF
LORD BYRON,
THE FIRST POET OF THE AGE IN WHICH HE LIVED,
THESE TRIBUTES,
WEAK AND UNWORTHY OF HIM,
BUT IN THEMSELVES SINCERE,
Are Inscribed,
WITH THE DEEPEST REVERENCE.
_July, 1825._
At this period no monument--not even so simple a slab as records the
death of the humblest villager in the neighbourhood--had been erected to
mark the spot in which all that is mortal of the greatest man of our day
reposes; and he has been buried more than twelve months.--_July, 1825._
So should it be: let o’er this grave
No monumental banners wave;
Let no word speak--no trophy tell
Aught that may break the charming spell,
By which, as on this sacred ground
He kneels, the pilgrim’s heart is bound.
A still, resistless influence,
Unseen, but felt, binds up the sense;
While every whisper seems to breathe
Of the mighty dead who sleeps beneath.
--And though the master-hand is cold,
And though the lyre it once controlled
Rests mute in death; yet from the gloom
Which dwells about this holy tomb,
Silence breathes out more eloquent,
Than epitaph or monument.
One laurel wreath--the poet’s crown--
Is here by hand unworthy thrown;
One tear that so much worth should die,
Fills, as I kneel, my sorrowing eye;
This is the simple offering,
Poor, but earnest, which I bring.
The tear has dried; the wreath shall fade,
The hand that twined it soon be laid
In cold obstruction--but the fame
Of him who tears and wreath shall claim
From most remote posterity,
While Britain lives, can never die!--J. B.
The following list contains almost all the names that are known to the
public, or are distinguished by rank or peculiarity of circumstance:--
The Count Pietro Gamba, Jan. 31st, 1825.
The Duke of Sussex visited Lord Byron’s tomb, October 1824.
Lieut.-Colonel Wildman.
Lieut.-Colonel Charles Lallemand.
The Count de Blankensee, Chamberlain to the King of Prussia, Sept.
7th, 1825.
1825, Sept. 23. William Fletcher visited his ever-to-be-lamented
lord and master’s tomb.
10th month. Jeremiah Wiffen, Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire.
1826, July 30. C. R. Pemberton, a wanderer.
1828, Jan. 21. Thomas Moore.
Sept. 12. Sir Francis S. Darwin, and party.
Nov. 21. Lieut.-Colonel D’Aguilar.
------ Eliza D’Aguilar.
Dec. 1. Lieut.-Colonel James Hughes of Llysdulles.
1829, Sept. 3. Lord Byron’s Sister, the Honourable Augusta Mary
Leigh, visited this church.
1831, May 17. Rev. Joseph Gilbert, Nottingham.
------ Ann Gilbert (formerly Ann Taylor of Ongar).
Aug. 22. Lieut.-Gen. and Mrs. Need, Fountain Dale.
1832, Jan. 8. M. Van Buren, Minister Plenipotentiary from the
United States.
------ Washington Irving.
------ John Van Buren, New York, U. S. America.
Dec. 27. Lady Lammine, Salendale.
1834, Feb. 15. Domingo Maria Ruiz de la Vega, Ex-Deputy of the
Spanish Cortes, from Granada.
Feb. 23. J. Bellairs, Esq., visited Newstead Abbey, and Lord
Byron’s tomb, such as it is--one of his greatest
admirers of the day!
------ W. Arundale, of London, accompanied the said J. B.!
March 8. J. Murray, Jun. Albemarle-street, London.
Although we did not, at this time, enter even the churchyard, thoughts
and feelings which had presented themselves in this very spot, on the
day of Lord Byron’s funeral, again returned.
His birth, his death, dark fortunes, and brief life,
Wondrous and wild as his impetuous lay,
Passed through my mind; his wanderings, loves, and strife;
I saw him marching on from day to day:
The kilted boy, roaming mid mountains grey;
The noble youth, whose life-blood was a flame,
In the bright land of demi-gods astray;
The monarch of the lyre, whose haughty name
Spread on from shore to shore, the watchword of all fame;
And then, a lifeless form! The spell was broke;
The wizard’s wild enchantment was destroyed;
He who at will did dreadful forms invoke,
And called up beautiful spirits from the void,
Back to the scenes in which he early joyed,
He came but knew it not. In vain earth’s bloom--
In vain the sky’s clear beauty, which oft buoyed
His spirit to delight; an early doom
Brought him in glory’s arms to the awaiting tomb.
He lies--how quietly that heart which yet
Never could slumber, slumbers now for aye!
He lies--where first, love, fame, his young soul set
With passionate power on flame; where gleam the grey
Turrets of Newstead, through the solemn sway
Of verdurous woods; and where that hoary crown
Of lofty trees, “in circular array,”
Shroud Mary’s Hall, who thither may look down,
And think how he loved her, ay, more than his renown.
ANNESLEY HALL.
From Hucknall we ascended chiefly through open, wild lands:--to our
right the wooded valley of Newstead, every moment spreading itself out
more broadly; and before us the forest heights of Annesley, growing more
bold and attractive. A wild gusty breeze, and dark flying clouds, added
sensibly to the deep solitude and picturesque character of the scene. We
soon passed a cottage, having beside it an old brick pillar surmounted
with a stone ball, and before it an avenue of lime trees, which appeared
some time to have formed the boundary or place of entrance to the park;
then a new lodge, and found ourselves at the foot of the steep hill,
styled in Byron’s Dream--
A gentle hill,
Green, and of mild declivity.
The greenness and mildness of declivity, however, we afterwards found
were on the side by which Byron and Mary Chaworth had ascended it from
her house; on this side it is a remarkably barren and extremely steep
hill. However, up we went, and on the summit discovered the strict
accuracy of his delineation of it.
I saw two beings in the hues of youth,
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green, and of mild declivity; the last,
As ’t were the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and corn-fields, and the abodes of men
Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs:--the hill
Was crowned with a peculiar diadem
Of trees in circular array, so fixed,
Not by the sport of Nature, but of man.
A most living landscape it is indeed, including all the objects so
vividly here given; amongst them, the most conspicuous, the house of his
living ancestors, and the house where he has joined them in death; and
extending from the woody skirts of Sherwood Forest to the mill-crowned
heights of Nottingham. By the way, a strange mistake of Moore’s here
presented itself. Immediately after the passage just quoted, Byron
proceeds to speak further of this young pair, and says:--
Even _now_ she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood,
Looking afar, if yet her lover’s steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.
Moore, commenting on this, tells us that the image of the lover’s steed
was suggested by the Nottingham race-ground,--a race-ground actually
nine miles off, and moreover lying in a hollow and totally hidden from
view; had the lady’s eyes, indeed, been so marvellously good as to
discern a horse nine miles off! Mary Chaworth, in fact, was looking for
her lover’s steed along the road as it winds up the common from
Hucknall.
But a stranger discovery soon made us forget this _Irish bull_. We had
no sooner reached the summit of the hill, than to our inexpressible
astonishment we found the very trees so strikingly pointed out in this
most interesting poem, “the trees in circular array”--cut down! These
trees, and none else, cut down! There were the trees crowning the whole
length of the “long ridge” standing in their greyness; and there were
the stumps of “the trees in circular array” in the earth at our feet! An
immediate and irresistible conviction forced itself on our minds; but we
write it not; we merely state the fact, that that memorable landmark of
love, made interesting to every age by the poetry of passion, had been
removed. Our indignation may be imagined when we found that not only had
the trees been cut down, but there was an actual attempt to cut down the
hill itself, by making a gravel-pit there;--of all places in the world,
to think of making a gravel-pit on the top of that steep hill, when it
might be got from the bottom of any hill in the neighbourhood. We have
since been told that it was the intention of its present proprietor, the
husband of Mary Chaworth, to have cut down all the trees upon that hill;
but that his design was prevented by the interference of his eldest
son, to whom the estate descends by entail; and that he was compelled by
the spirited conduct of the son, to plant the hill afresh; but he has
complied with the letter, overlooking the spirit of the agreement, in
the most perfect style, having planted the sides of the hill all over
with fir-trees, so that it will in a short time shroud the place, and
smother it completely from the view.[14]
[14] Mentioning the felling of these trees to a mechanic soon
afterwards,--“Trees,” I added, “that might be seen so far.” “Seen,
sir!” he exclaimed, “those trees were seen all over the world!” He
meant through the medium of Byron’s poetry. It was an expression, and
accompanied by an energy of feeling, that would have done honour to
any man.
The indignation we felt on this occasion, perhaps, made us more sensibly
alive to the character of the place. Byron, in some juvenile verses,
exclaims--
Hills of Annesley, bleak and barren,
Where my thoughtless childhood strayed,
How the northern tempests warring,
How! above thy tufted shade.
So strongly did the wind drive over this ridge, that we could scarcely
make head against it; and remembering to have heard of a temple which
formerly crowned this hill, but had been blown down either by tempest or
war, we looked amongst the broken ground, and perceived considerable
remains of masonry, probably the foundations of the temple: nor can a
finer situation for such an erection be imagined.
The trees which crowned “the ridge,” and which, at a distance, appeared
large, we soon saw, were of stunted growth, with tops curled, and
sturdy, as if accustomed to wrestle with the tempests. An avenue of them
stretched away into distant woods. Large decayed branches lay here and
there beneath, indicating a solitude and neglect of the place pleasing
to the imagination. Before us, across a descending slope--the hill of
mild and green declivity--extended, right and left, noble woods; and in
the midst of them, in the midst of a smaller crescent of wood, we
descried the tall grey chimneys and ivy-covered walls and gables of the
old Hall, and the top of the church-tower. We hastened down,--observing
on our left, in an old forest-slope, a large herd of deer, which had a
good effect,--and struck into a footpath that led directly up towards
the house. As we drew nearer, the old building, hung with luxuriant ivy
and shrouded among tall trees, far overtopping its tall chimneys; amid
shrubberies of wondrous growth of evergreens, among which are
conspicuous, three remarkable ilexes, with black-green foliage crowning
their short thick black trunks, and with grassy openings sloping down to
the warm south; struck us forcibly with its picturesque and silent
beauty. We found ourselves now, apparently at the back of a high
garden-wall, by the side of which ran a row of lime trees, which seemed
at one time to have been pollarded and trained espalier-wise, but had
now sent up heads of a luxuriant and fantastic growth. On our other
hand, lay a wood, from which the thickets being cleared away, left us
ample view of its ivy-mantled trees, and the ground beneath them one
green expanse of dog’s-mercury and fresh leaves of the blue-bell. Tufts
of primroses were scattered all about, and the wood-anemonies trembled
in the wind. But over all, such a mantle of deep silence seemed cast,
that it reminded us of some enchanted place in the fairy and
forest-stories of Tieck.
At the top of this road, turning suddenly to the left, we found
ourselves before
The massy gate of that old hall,
from which Byron declares that,
Mounting his steed he went his way,
And ne’er repassed that hoary threshold more.
But all was silent and lifeless. No person was to be discerned in the
court to which it opened; there were no signs of life except in the
cooing of some pigeons and the cawing of certain jackdaws. We went round
the outbuildings into the churchyard, which is level with the top of the
court-wall, and looks directly into it. We leaned over a massy parapet,
and looked down into this court; the spell of an invincible silence
seemed to cover the whole place. In the gravel walks which ran round the
court, there were traces of carriage wheels; but you felt as if no
carriage with the bustle and vivacity of active life could ever more
enter there. In the centre of the grass-plot, a basin surrounded by a
hedge of honeysuckle, and which had doubtless once possessed the life
and beauty of a fountain, now shewed only water, black, stagnant, and
covered with masses of yellow moss. We were close to the house; its
curtained windows gave it an air of habitation; but no sound nor visible
indication of the presence of man was about it. We walked along the
green and picturesque churchyard: the back of the buildings on this side
of the court bounded part of it; they were in the last state of decay;
wide gaps in the roof gave us a view into dark and dreary stables. We
came to the farm-yard, also joining the churchyard: it had the same
aspect of desertion. There was neither cattle nor ricks in it, but the
brandreth, or frame on which a rick once stood, littered with decaying
straw, and its air of desolation made more striking by a piece of old
wooden balustrade cast upon it. There were barn-doors standing wide
open; and the litter of the yard even appeared dusty and grey with age.
You felt sure no human foot could have disturbed it for years. We
descended from the churchyard, and went round the farm-buildings once
more towards the old “massy gate.” At the back of these buildings were
nailed the trophies of the gamekeeper by hundreds, we might, we think,
say thousands; wild cats, dried to blackness, stretched their downward
heads and legs from the wall; hawks, magpies, and jays, hung in tattered
remnants; but all grey and even green with age; and the heads of birds
in plenteous rows, nailed beak upward, were dried and shrivelled by the
sun, and winds, and frosts, of many summers and winters, till their
distinctive characters were lost. They all seemed to speak the same
silent language:--to say, Ay, this was once the abode of a prosperous
old family; here were abundance of friends, and dependents going to and
fro; horses and hounds going forth in vociferous joy; abroad was the
chase and the sound of the gun,--within were spits turning, and good
fellowship; but all this is long since over--a blight and a sorrow have
fallen here.
We now approached the “massy gateway” by a wide entrance, which a pair
of great doors had once closed--one of these had fallen from its hinges,
and the other swung in the wind, banging against its post with a hollow
sound, whose echoes told of vacancy. Above the gateway, the vane on the
cupola turned to and fro in the gusty air, with a dreary queek-quake,
queek-quake: all besides was still. We stood and looked at each other
with an expression that said,--Did you ever see any thing like this? At
this moment an old grey dog came softly out of the court--the first
living thing we had seen except the jackdaws and the pigeons; quietly he
came, as if he too felt the nature of his abode. It was with no vivacity
of action, or noisy bark: he stood and silently wagged his tail; and as
we drew near him, as silently retreated into the court. We entered this
silent place, and looked around. The house formed its western end;
stables and coach-houses formed its north and eastern sides; the south
was open to the shrubbery. The ivy hung in huge masses from all the
walls. In the eastern end was the “massy gateway” mentioned by Byron,
arched over, and surmounted by a clock and cupola. So profoundly
lifeless and deserted seemed the place, that though the clock-finger
pointed to the true time of the day--exactly half-past twelve
o’clock--our imaginations refused for some time to believe that the
clock could actually be going: we felt positive astonishment when it
proved to us that it really did.
We now resolved to ascertain at the house itself, if it had any living
inhabitants; and on approaching the hall-door, we heard a sound in a
stable; we went in, and descried, in a dismal room adjoining it, a man
sitting by a fire in a corner, and a dog lying on the hearth. The man
and the place were alike forlorn. They were dirty, squalid, desolate. We
had said, who could have supposed so abandoned a spot so near
Nottingham? but who could have imagined so wild and banditti-like a
being as that man, within so short a distance of a large town? His dress
and person had every character of reckless neglect; his black hair hung
about his pale face; he had no handkerchief about his neck; he sate and
devoured his dinner, which he appeared to have cooked with his own
hands, looking up at us with ruffian stupidity, as he answered our
questions with a surly bluntness, without ceasing to help himself, with
a large pocket-knife, and no fork, to his meal. He told us we could not
see the house--master never let it be seen. When asked, why? he could
not tell--but it was so; but we might ask the old woman in the house.
Away we went, and a jewel of an old woman we found.
She was the very _beau ideal_ of an old servant; all simplicity and
fidelity, full of the history of the family; wrapped up in its fortunes
and its honours--a part and parcel of the race and place, for she had
been in the family above sixty years,--being taken, as she said, when
she was ten years old, by Mary Chaworth’s grandfather, and put to
school, and taught to read and write, to mark and to flower; for she
would, he said, be a nice sharp girl to wait on him. “Oh! he was a
pretty man--a very pretty, well-behaved gentleman,” said she with a
sigh. Old Nanny Marsland, for such was her name, seemed a pure and
unsophisticated creature; the regular influx of visiters had not spoiled
her; the curious and the pert, and the idle, the insolent and the
foolish, had not troubled the clear sincere current of her thoughts; had
not made her heart and spirit turn inward, in self-defence, and
converted her into the subtle and parrot shew-woman.
She never dreamt of any thing being blameable that had been done by any
of _the family_. She delighted to talk of the Hall and its people; and
feeling her solitude,--for she was the sole regular occupant,--some one
to talk to was a luxury. Could we have hoped for a creature more to our
hearts’ desire? Under her guidance we progressed through this most
interesting old place; thoughts and feelings, never to be forgotten,
springing up at every step.
The house is not large; and desertion had stamped within, the same
characters as on all without. Damp had disfigured the walls; a fire of
cheerful pine-logs blazed in the hall and in the kitchen; but everywhere
else was the chill and gloom of the old neglected mansion. All the more
modern furniture, and most of the paintings, had been removed, and
thereby the keeping of the abode was but the better preserved. We know
not how to describe the feelings with which we traversed these rooms. It
was as if the hall of one of our old English families had been hidden
beneath a magic cloud for ages, and suddenly revealed to our eyes, now,
at a time when every thing belonging to this country is so much
changed;--houses, men, manners, and opinions. When we entered the
old-fashioned family hall, standing as it stood ages ago, furnished as
it was ages ago, with its antique stove, its antique sofas, if so they
can be called, made of wood carved, and curiously painted, and cushioned
with scarlet, standing on each side of the fire; the antique French
timepiece on its bracket; its various old cabinets and tables standing
by walls; and its floor of large and small squares of alternating black
marble and white stone--the domestic sanctuary of a race whom we regard
as our progenitors, but widely different to ourselves, seemed suddenly
revealed to us, and we could almost have expected to see the rough,
boisterous squire, or the stately baron, issue from one of the
side-doors; or to hear the rustling of the silken robe of some
long-waisted dame, who could occasionally leap a five-barred gate as
readily as she could dance at the Christmas festival; or one of high and
solemn beauty, in whom devotion, deep, uninquiring and undoubting, was
the great principle and passion of life; to whom the domestic chapel was
a holy place; the chaplain her daily counsellor; and the distribution of
alms her daily occupation. We saw before us the hearthstone of a race
that lived in the full enjoyment of aristocratic ascendancy, when rank
was old and undisputed; when neither mercantile wealth had pressed on
their nobility on the one hand, nor popular knowledge and rights on the
other; when the gentry lived only to be reverenced and obeyed, every one
in the midst of his own forests and domains as a king, and led forth his
tenants and serfs to the wars of his country, or to the chase of his own
wide wilds; when field sports and jovial feastings, and love-making,
were the life-employment of men and women, who took rank and power as an
unquestioned heritage, and never troubled their brain with gathering
knowledge: and all below them were supposed to be happy, because they
were ignorant and submissive.
This hall, which occupies the centre of the building, is nearly sixty
feet long by thirty wide, supported by two elliptic arches and Ionic
pillars. The middle of the room is now occupied by a billiard-table,
which formerly stood in an upper room, called the terrace-room, of which
we shall speak presently. The great door, entering from the porch, was
secured by a massy bar of wood which had been rudely let into the walls
at each end, at the time of the riots of the Reform Bill, when
Nottingham Castle was burnt, and when the mob were expected here, who
owed the proprietor a piece of retribution, and actually attempted to
burn his house at Colwick; whence his wife, Mary Chaworth, only escaped
by being carried from her bed, where illness had long confined her, and
hidden for some hours in the shrubbery during excessive rain, and
afterwards conveyed across the Trent in a boat. At the lower end of this
hall an easy flight of steps leads to the upper apartments. Near the
fire, at the upper end, a few steps lead into a beautiful little
breakfast-room, which looks out into the garden, and forms one of the
projections of the building, the staircase at the lower end forming the
other: the three large, old-fashioned windows which light the hall,
lying on this side, and looking out into a little parterre, fenced off
with a trellis-fence, even with the two projections we have spoken
of--such a parterre as one often meets with, belonging to old houses--a
little favoured sanctuary of garden-ground, where choice flowers were
trained, and which was the especial care of page and gardener, before
ladies took to gardening themselves. This, which is now a perfect
wilderness, almost overrun with shrubs and the tall tree-like laurels
which encumber wall and window, and almost exclude daylight from the
hall, to the great annoyance of our good old woman, was once, as was
fitting, the favourite flower-garden of Mary Chaworth.
The little breakfast-room we mentioned, looks out not only by a side
window into the parterre, but also by two large low windows into the
garden; a fine old garden, with a fine stately old terrace, one of the
noblest it was ever our good fortune to see, and such a one as Danby or
Turner would be proud to enrich their fine pictures with. In this room
were a few family portraits. One a small full-length figure, which the
old woman very significantly told us was Byron’s Chaworth; that is, the
Chaworth killed by the poet’s grandfather in a duel. Another portrait
she informed us was the last Lord Chaworth; for this estate, which had
been in the family of the Annesleys from the time of the Conquest, came
into that of Lord Viscount Chaworth of Armagh, in Ireland, by the
marriage of one of his ancestors with the sole heiress, Alice de
Annesley, in the reign of Henry VI. “And this,” she said, pointing to a
female portrait, “was his lawful wife.” “What then,” we said, “there was
an unlawful wife, was there?” “Yes,” she added, “she is here.” We
glanced at the picture placed in the shady corner by the window, next,
however, to Lord Chaworth, and exclaimed, “and a good judge was his
Lordship too!” A creature of most perfect and wondrous beauty it was
that we beheld. What a fine, rich, oval countenance and noble forehead
slightly shaded by auburn locks! what large dark eyes of inexpressible
expression! what a soft, delicate, yet beautiful and sunny complexion!
what a beautiful rounding of the cheek, chin, and throat! what exquisite
features! what a perfect mixture of nobility of mind, with elegance and
simplicity of taste. Never did we behold a more enchanting vision of
youth and beauty; and all this hidden for generations in a dark nook of
this old hall, unmentioned, and unknown. It were worth a journey from
London but to gaze upon. Beautiful as this portrait is, it represents a
mole upon either cheek; but this, instead of detracting from the
loveliness of the face, as might be imagined, only appears to give it
character and individuality, and vouches for the fidelity of the
likeness. The painting, too, is extremely well done; far superior to any
thing else in the house, except it be the satin petticoat of a Miss
Burdett in the terrace-room. “And who,” we inquired, “was this charming
creature?” “She was a girl of the village, sir,” was the reply. “What!
could the village produce a creature like her?” “Yes: his Lordship took
her into the house as a servant; but she did not like him and went away;
however, he got her afterwards, and built a house for her on the estate,
and she had one child. But she died, poor thing! all was not right
somehow; and all her money she put in a cupboard for her son,--they
would shew you the cupboard in the house to this day; and on the very
night she died, her own relations came and took away the money;--things
weren’t as they should have been! and she came again.” “What, was this
the lady that we have heard an old man say, came up out of a well, and
sat in a tree by moonlight, combing her hair?” “No, Lord bless you! that
was another; but the parson _laid her_, and the well is covered in; but
for all that she walks yet!” We smiled at the good woman’s very orthodox
belief in ghosts; but we know not whether we should not be apt to catch
the contagion of superstitious feeling, if we were to dwell all alone in
this old house as she does, and hear the winds howling and sighing about
it at night; the long ivy rustling about the windows, and dashing
against the panes; and the owls hooting about in many a wild, piercing,
and melancholy tone; and feel oneself in the unparticipated solitude of
those ancient rooms, with all their trains of sad memories.
Besides this portrait of the beautiful and unhappy Mrs. Milner, we
bestowed a look of great interest on one of much attraction, the
daughter of Viscount Chaworth--not beautiful, but full of the
fascination of cultivated mind, and of a heart so living and loving,
that it caused the eyelids to droop over their beamy orbs, with an
expression that made you tremble for the peace of its possessor. One
other picture attracted our attention from its singularity. It
represents a landscape, apparently, “the hill of green and mild
declivity,” the line of trees, and the trees in circular array, from
among which rises the temple we spoke of before, and which our cicerone
assured us had been considered “the finest in all England, but had been
blown down in Oliver Cromwell’s days.” In the foreground stands, as if
painted in enamel, a gentleman in a strange sort of dress-jerkin, of
white satin, with a short petticoat of purple velvet bordered with gold
lace. On his right hand his amazonian lady, half the head taller than
himself, clad in a riding-dress of green, bordered likewise with
gold-lace; and on either side of them a son, in the full dress of
William and Mary’s reign; with powdered wigs, long lapped scarlet coats,
waistcoats, and breeches, with white silk stockings on their neat little
legs, and lace ruffles at their hands, each with his little head turned
on one side;--the one caressing a fawn, the other a greyhound; and the
family group completed by the groom standing a little behind, holding
the lady’s palfrey ready saddled for her use. These, and a portrait of
the son of Lord Chaworth, are all the family pictures which the house
contains.
Leaving then this room, we re-crossed the hall, and ascending the
staircase at the lower end, entered the drawing-room, which is over the
hall--a handsome room, and the best furnished in the house. The most
interesting piece of furniture it contains, or perhaps, which the house
itself contains, is a screen covered over with a great number of
cuttings in black paper, done by a Mrs. Goodchild, and representing a
great variety of family incidents and character--those little passing
incidents in life, which, though rarely chronicled, are most influential
on its fortunes--on which often its very destiny hangs. The receipt of a
letter--the first meeting--the last parting--how much do these things
involve! Here we were introduced to Mary Chaworth, the lovely and
graceful maiden, full of hope, and life, and gaiety; with her friends
and dependents about her; at the very time when Lord Byron became
attached to her. Of the accuracy of this likeness we have no doubt, from
the wonderful fidelity of some of the others, with whose persons we are
acquainted.
[Illustration]
In one place she is represented as sitting in a room, her attitude one
of terror. A man is before her presenting a pistol, and a little
terrified page is concealing himself under a table. In another, she sits
with her mother and a gentleman at tea; a foot-man behind waiting upon
them. Again, she is in the gardens or grounds, walking with her cousin,
Miss Radford; her rustic hat thrown back upon her shoulders; her
beautiful head turned aside; and her hand put forth to receive a letter
from a page, kneeling on one knee,--a letter from her lover and
subsequent husband.
Again, she is playing with a little child; and in all, her figure is
full of exquisite grace and vivacity, and the profile of the face
remarkably fine. It is impossible to say with what intense interest we
examined these memorials of private life; these passages so full of
vitality and character, incidental, but important--the very essence of
an autobiography.
On a small table in this room lay a rich fan belonging to Mary Chaworth,
which the old woman told us had been laid down by her there on some
particular occasion--perhaps the last time she used it, and, therefore,
was never moved from the spot. We observed, too, another of those little
incidents of family history in this house, which have something
peculiarly touching in them. On the staircase stood the sea-chest of a
son who died at sea. It stood as it had been sent home after his death,
sealed up, and the seals still unbroken. Poor Nanny Marsland said
sorrowfully--“Ah, poor fellow! he was a pious lad; he would fain have
been a clergyman, but he could not be that--for the living went to his
elder brother. He did not like the sea; but he used to write to the poor
dear lady, his mother, and say--‘God’s will be done!’ Eh! what sweet
letters he used to send, if you could but have heard them--but it’s all
one--he’s gone; and his poor mother, that used to sit and cry over
them--she’s gone too!”
From the drawing-room we passed to the one called the terrace-room, from
its opening by a glass door upon the terrace, which runs along the top
of the garden at right angles with the house, and level with this second
story, descending to the garden by a double flight of broad stone steps,
in the middle of its length, which is about eighty yards. This room
formerly contained the billiard-table, and in it Mary Chaworth and her
noble lover passed much time. He was fond of the terrace, and used to
pace backwards and forwards upon it, and amuse himself with shooting
with a pistol at a door. It was here that she last saw him, with the
exception of a dinner-visit, after his return from his travels. It was
here that he took his last leave of Mary Chaworth, when
He went his way,
And ne’er repassed that hoary threshold more.
It was here, then, those ill-fated ones stood, and lingered, and
conversed, for at least two hours. Mary Chaworth was here all life and
spirit, full of youth, and beauty, and hope. What a change fell upon her
after-life! She now stood here, the last scion of a time-honoured race,
with large possessions, with the fond belief of sharing them in joy with
the chosen of her life. Never did human life present a sadder contrast!
There are many reasons why we should draw a veil over this mournful
history, much of which will never be known; suffice it to say, that it
was not without most real, deep, and agonizing causes, that years after,
In her home, her native home,
She dwelt begirt with growing infancy,
Daughters and sons of beauty,--but behold!
Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
As if its lid was charged with unshed tears.
It was not without a fearful outraging of trusting affections, the
desolation of a spirit trodden and crushed by that which should have
shielded it, that
She was changed
As by the sickness of the soul: her mind
Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes
They had not their own lustre, but the look
Which is not of the earth; she was become
The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things;
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others’ sight, familiar were to hers.
There must have come a day, a soul-prostrating day, when she must have
felt the grand mistake she had made, in casting away a heart that never
ceased to love her and sorrow for her, and a mind that wrapt her, even
severed as it was from her, in an imperishable halo of glory.
There is nothing in all the histories of broken affections and mortal
sorrows, more striking and melancholy than the idea of this lady, so
bright and joyous-hearted in her youth, sitting in her latter years, for
days and weeks, alone and secluded, uninterrupted by any one, in this
old house, weeping over the poems which commented in burning words on
the individual fortunes of herself and Lord Byron--
The one
To end in madness--both in misery.
With this idea vividly impressed on our spirits, a darker shade seemed
to settle down on those antiquated rooms;--we passed out into the
garden, at the door at which Byron passed; we trod that stately terrace,
and gazed at the old vase placed in the centre of its massy balustrade,
bearing the original escutcheon of the Lord Chaworth, and standing a
brave object as seen from the garden, into which we descended, and
wandered amongst its high-grown evergreens. But every thing was tinged
with the spirit and fate of that unhappy lady. The walks were overgrown
with grass; and tufts of snowdrop leaves, now grown wild and shaggy, as
they do after the flower is over, grew in them; and tufts of a beautiful
and peculiar kind of fumitory, with its pink bloom, and the daffodils
and primroses of early spring looked out from amongst the large forest
trees that surround the garden. Every thing, even the smallest, seemed
in unison with that great spirit of silence and desolation which hovered
over the place; and the gusty winds that swept the long wood-walk by
which we came away, gave us a most fitting adieu.
* * * * *
We only saw just in time, this interesting old place in its desolation.
It is now repaired, altered, and, I understand, every historical
identity as far as possible destroyed.
CHAPTER VII.
NEWSTEAD.
We left Annesley, as we have said, by that long wood-walk which leads to
the Mansfield road; and advancing on that road about a mile, then turned
to the right through a deep defile down into the fields. Here we found
ourselves in an extensive natural amphitheatre, surrounded by bold
declivities--in some places bleak and barren, in others, richly embossed
with furze and broom. Before us, at the distance of another mile, lay
Newstead amid its woods, across a moory flat. The wind whistled and
sighed amongst the dry, white, wiry grass, of last year’s growth, as we
walked along; and a solitary heron, with slow strokes of its ample
wings, flew athwart--not our path, for path we had none, having been
tempted into the fields by the beauty of the scene. We followed the
course of a little stream, clear as crystal, and swift as human life,
and soon found ourselves at the tail of the lake so often referred to by
Lord Byron.
Before the mansion lay a lucid lake,
Broad as transparent, deep and freshly fed
By a river, which its softened way did take
In currents through the calmer water spread
Around; the wild fowl nestled in the brake
And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed:
The woods sloped downward to its brink, and stood
With their green faces fixed upon the flood.
It was a scene that would have delighted Bewick for its picturesque
sedgyness. The streams that fed it came down a woody valley shaggy with
sedge--the lake thereabout being bordered with tall masses of it. There
was a little island all overgrown with it and water-loving trees; and
wild fowl in abundance were hastening to hide themselves in its covert,
or arose and flew around with a varied clangour. Another moment, and we
passed a green knoll, and were in front of the Abbey. John Evelyn, who
once visited it, was much struck with the resemblance between its
situation and that of Fontainbleau.
Here all was neat and habitable--had an air of human life and human
attention about it, that formed a strong contrast to the scene of
melancholy desolation we had left; and also to this same scene when I
visited it years ago, at the time when it was sold, I believe, to a Mr.
Claughton, who afterwards, for some cause or other, threw up the
bargain. To give an idea of the impression this place made upon me, I
shall merely refer to an account furnished by me many years ago to a
periodical of the time, which account was partly quoted by Galt in his
Life of Lord Byron, and made liberal use of by Moore, though without
acknowledgment. I was a boy, rambling through the woods nutting, when
suddenly, I came in front of the Abbey, which I had never seen before,
and learned from a peasant who happened to be near, that I might get to
see it for the value of an ounce of tobacco given to old Murray, a
grey-headed old man--who had been in the family from a boy, and who now,
at his own request, lies buried in Hucknall churchyard, as close to the
family vault as it was possible to lay him. He and a maid-servant were
then the only inmates of the place, being left to superintend the
removal of the goods. I marched up to the dismal-looking porch in front,
to which you ascended by a flight of steps, and gave a thundering knock,
which almost startled me by the hollow sound it seemed to send through
the ancient building. After waiting a good while, some one approached,
and began to withdraw bars and bolts, and to let fall chains; and
presently, the old grey-headed man opened the massy door cautiously, to
a width just sufficient to enable him to see who was there. Finding
nothing more formidable than a boy, he opened wide, and I inquired if I
could see the place. The old man first looked at me, and then around,
and said, “How many are there of you?” As he was evidently calculating
the probable amount of profit, I gave him such evidence of sufficient
reward that his doors instantly flew open, and he desired me to wander
where I pleased, till he could return to me, having left some important
affair in _medias res_. Here then was a wilderness of an old house
thrown open to me, and the effect it had on my youthful imagination is
indescribable.
The embellishments which the abbey had received from his lordship, had
more of the brilliant conception of the poet in them than of the sober
calculations of common life. I passed through many rooms which he had
superbly finished, but over which he had permitted so wretched a roof to
remain, that, in about half a dozen years, the rain had visited his
proudest chambers; the paper had rotted on the walls, and fell in
comfortless sheets upon glowing carpets and canopies; upon beds of
crimson and gold; clogging the glittering wings of eagles, and
dishonouring coronets. From many rooms the furniture was gone. In the
entrance hall alone remained the paintings of his old friends--the dog
and bear.
The mansion’s self was vast and venerable,
With more of the romantic than had been
Elsewhere preserved; the cloisters still were stable,
The cells too and refectory I ween;
An exquisite small chapel had been able
Still unimpaired to decorate the scene;
The rest had been reformed, replaced, or sunk,
And spoke more of the baron than the monk.
Huge halls, long galleries, spacious chambers, joined
By no quite lawful marriage of the arts,
Might shock a connoisseur; but, when combined,
Formed a whole, which, irregular in parts,
Yet left a grand impression on the mind,
At least, of those whose eyes are in their hearts.
The long and gloomy gallery, which, whoever views will be strongly
reminded of Lara, as indeed a survey of this place will awake more than
one scene in that poem,--had not yet relinquished the sombre pictures of
its ancient race--
That frowned
In rude, but antique portraiture around.
In the study, which is a small chamber overlooking the garden, the books
were packed up; but there remained a sofa, over which hung a sword in a
gilt sheath; and at the end of the room opposite the window stood a pair
of light fancy stands, each supporting a couple of the most perfect and
finely-polished skulls I ever saw; most probably selected, along with
the far-famed one converted into a drinking-cup, and inscribed with some
well-known verses, from a vast number taken from the abbey cemetery, and
piled up in the form of a mausoleum, but since recommitted to the
ground. Between them hung a gilt crucifix.
To those skulls he evidently alludes in Lara, where he makes his
servants ask one another--
Why gazed he so upon the ghastly head,
Which hands profane had gathered from the dead,
That still beside his open volume lay,
As if to startle all save him away?
And they most probably suggested that fine passage in Childe Harold--
Remove yon skull from out those shattered heaps:
Is that a temple where a God may dwell?
Why, even the worm at last disdains her shattered cell!
Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall,
Its chambers desolate, and portals foul;
Yes, this was once ambition’s airy hall,
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul;
Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole,
The gay recess of wisdom and of wit,
And passion’s host, that never brooked control:
Can all, saint, sage, or sophist ever writ.
People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?
In the servants’ hall, lay a stone coffin, in which were fencing gloves
and foils; and on the wall of the ample but cheerless kitchen, was
painted in large letters, “Waste not, want not.”
During a great part of his lordship’s minority, the abbey was in the
occupation of Lord Grey de Ruthen, his hounds, and divers colonies of
jackdaws, swallows, and starlings. The internal traces of this Goth were
swept away; but without, all appeared as rude and unreclaimed as he
could have left it. I must confess, that if I was astonished at the
heterogeneous mixture of splendour and ruin within, I was more so at the
perfect uniformity of wildness without. I never had been able to
conceive poetic genius in its domestic bower, without figuring it,
diffusing the polish of its delicate taste on every thing about it. But
here the spirit of beauty seemed to have dwelt, but not to have been
caressed;--it was the spirit of the wilderness. The gardens were exactly
as their late owner described them in his earliest poems:--
Through thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle;
Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay;
In thy once smiling gardens the hemlock and thistle,
Now choke up the rose, that late bloomed in the way.
With the exception of the dog’s tomb--a conspicuous and elegant object,
placed on an ascent of several steps, crowned with a lambent flame, and
panelled with white marble tablets, of which that containing the
celebrated epitaph was at that time removed, I do not recollect the
slightest trace of culture or improvement. The late lord, a stern and
desperate character, who is never mentioned by the neighbouring peasants
without a significant shake of the head, might have returned and
recognised every thing about him, except, perchance, an additional crop
of weeds. There still gloomily slept the old pond, into which he is said
to have hurled his lady in one of his fits of fury, whence she was
rescued by the gardener; a courageous blade, who was the lord’s master,
and chastised him for his barbarity. There still, at the end of the
garden, in a grove of oak, two towering satyrs--he with his club, and
Mrs. Satyr, with her chubby, cloven-footed brat, placed on pedestals, at
the intersections of the narrow and gloomy pathways, struck for a
moment, with their grim visages, and silent, shaggy forms, the fear into
your bosoms, which is felt by the neighbouring peasantry at “_the old
lord’s devils_.”
In the lake below the abbey, the artificial rock, which he piled at a
vast expense, still reared its lofty head; but the frigate which
fulfilled old Mother Shipton’s prophecy, by sailing on dry land to this
place from a distant port, had long vanished; and the only relics of his
naval whim were this rock, and his ship-boy, the venerable old Murray,
who accompanied me round the premises. The dark, haughty, impetuous, and
mad deeds of this nobleman, the poet’s grandfather, no doubt, by making
a vivid impression on his youthful fancy, furnished some of the
principal materials for the formation of his lordship’s favourite and
ever-recurring poetical hero. His manners and acts are the theme of
many a winter’s evening in that neighbourhood. In one of his paroxysms
of wrath, he shot his coachman, for giving, in his opinion, an improper
precedence, threw the corpse into the carriage, to his lady, mounted,
and drove himself. In a quarrel, which originally arose out of a dispute
between their gamekeepers, he killed his neighbour, Mr. Chaworth, the
lord of the adjoining manor. This rencontre took place at the Star and
Garter, Pall-Mall, after a convivial meeting--a club of Nottinghamshire
gentlemen. His lordship was committed to the Tower, and on April 16th,
1765, placed at the bar of the House of Lords, and without one
dissentient voice, convicted of manslaughter, and discharged on paying
his fees, having pleaded certain privileges under a statute of Queen
Anne. The particulars may be seen in Vol. X. of State Trials, published
by order of the House of Peers.
The old lord, from some cause of irritation against his son, said to be
on account of his marriage, who died before coming to the title, did all
he could to injure the estate. He is said to have pulled down a
considerable part of the house, and sold the materials; he cut down very
extensive plantations, and sold the young trees to the bakers of
Nottingham to heat their ovens with, or to the nurserymen; two of which,
Lombardy poplars, bought at that time, now stand at the head of a
fish-pond of my father’s, grown to an immense size.
Mr. Moore has justly remarked, that Lord Byron derived the great
peculiarities of his character from his ancestors. After I came away
from the abbey, I asked many people in the neighbourhood what sort of a
man the noble poet had been. The impression of his energetic but
eccentric character was obvious in their reply. “He is the deuce of a
fellow for strange fancies; he flogs the old lord to nothing: but he is
a hearty good fellow for all that.”
One of these fancies, as related by the miller at the head of the lake,
was, to get into a boat, with his two noble Newfoundland dogs, row into
the middle of the lake, then dropping the oars, tumble into the water.
The faithful animals would immediately follow, seize him by the collar,
one on each side, and bear him to land. This miller told me that every
month he came to be weighed, and if he found himself lighter he
appeared highly delighted; but if heavier, he went away in obvious ill
humour, and without saying a word. At this time even, _i. e._ before he
came of age, he had the greatest horror of corpulency, to which he
deemed himself hereditarily prone, and used to lie a certain time every
day in a hot-bed, made on purpose, to reduce himself. The
master-builder, who had been engaged in the restoration of the abbey,
said much about a certain _Kaled_, who then was with him,--probably the
same that accompanied him to Brighton, as his younger brother,--and of
the wild life kept up, and mad pranks played off, by him and his
companions. He described the mornings passing in the most profound
quiet, for his lordship and his guests did not rise till about one
o’clock; in the afternoon, the place was all alive with them;--they were
seen careering in all directions; at midnight, the old abbey was all lit
up, and resounded with their jollity. On one occasion they were called
up to extricate an unfortunate wight from the old stone coffin, where,
in some of their mad pranks, he had secreted himself, and fitted it so
well, that it was with difficulty he was drawn out, amid the merriment
of his comrades. No person, indeed, could form any correct notion of
Byron from his poetry, till the publication of his Don Juan, which
exhibits more of the style of his youthful conversational manner than
any other of his writings, except his journal. I have heard a lady who
used to see him at Mrs. Byron’s, at Nottingham, say that he was then, in
his teens, a most rackety fellow; was very fond of going into the
kitchen, and baking oatmeal cakes on the fireshovel; on which occasions,
the cook would sometimes pin a napkin to his coat, which being
discovered on his return to the parlour, he would rush out and pursue
the maids in all directions, and, to use the lady’s phrase, turn the
house upside down. When they went away, he always took care to ask the
servants if his mother had given them any thing; and on their replying
in the negative, he would say, “No, no! I knew that well enough;” when
he would make them a handsome present.
Such anecdotes of his youth abound; but one is too characteristic to be
omitted. An old man of the name of Kemp, of Farnsfield, was one day in
Southwell, when a dog in the minster-yard fell upon his little dog. He
was beating it off, when a genteel boy came up, and in a very decided
tone said, “Let them fight it out--they find their own clothes, don’t
they?” The old man said, clothes or no clothes, his dog should not be
worried. A stander-by asked him if he knew to whom he spoke. The old man
said he neither knew nor cared. “It is Lord Byron,” said the person; but
the old man said he did not care whether he was a lord or a duke, they
should not worry his dog; and having got his little dog under his arm,
he marched off in none of the best humour. Some time afterwards,
however, seeing “Hours of Idleness and other Poems, by Lord Byron,”
advertised, he recollected the spirit of the lad with so much
admiration, that he took his stick and set off to Newark to purchase the
book, and always afterwards remained a great admirer of his works.
Such was my acquaintance with the place then; it is now a good,
substantial, and very comfortable family mansion. With its external
appearance the public is well acquainted through various prints; and the
only objects in the interior, which can much interest strangers, as
connected with the history of Lord Byron, are equally familiar. The
picture of his wolf-dog, and his Newfoundland-dog--the living
Newfoundland-dog which he had with him in Greece; the skull-cup kept in
a cabinet in the drawing-room, and the little chapel and cloisters
mentioned by him. There are also in a lumber-room the identical
stone-coffin, and the foils I saw there twenty years ago, and a portrait
of old Murray smoking his pipe. There is also the well-known portrait by
Phillips. A full-length likeness of him as about to embark on his first
travels, which was in the drawing-room at that time, is now gone, but
has been engraved for Mr. Murray’s edition of his Life and Works.
It is fortunate for the public that the place has fallen into the hands
of a gentleman who affords the utmost facility for the inspection of it
by strangers. Nothing can exceed the easy courtesy with which it is
thrown open to them; and, as an old schoolfellow of Lord Byron’s, we
believe Colonel Wildman is as desirous as any man can be not to
obliterate any traces of his lordship’s former life here. There are some
particulars, however, in which I think this care might have been carried
more thoroughly into act. In the first place, I think a style of
architecture in restoring the abbey might have been adopted more
abbey-like--more in keeping with the old part of it--and more consonant
to the particular state of feeling with which admirers of the noble
poet’s genius would be likely to approach it. To my taste it is too
square and massy in its _tout ensemble_. I do not see why the architect,
whoever he was, should have gone back in the date of his style beyond
that of the ancient remains. The old western front is a specimen of what
Rickman calls the early English order of Anglo-Gothic architecture; so
light, so airy, so pure and beautiful, that the juxta-position of a
heavy Norman style, and especially of the ponderous, square, and stunted
tower at the south-west corner, is strange, and anything but pleasing. A
greater variety of outline--the projection of porches and
buttresses--the aspiring altitude of pointed gables--clustered chimneys,
and slender, sky-seeking turrets, would certainly have given greater
effect. Instead of a square mass of stone, as it appears at a distance,
it would have proclaimed its own beauty to the eye from every far-off
point at which it may be discovered. Any one who has seen Fonthill,
Abbotsford from the Galashiel’s road, or Ilam from the entrance of
Dovedale, may imagine how much more that effect would be in accordance,
not only with a low situation, but with the mental impressions of a
poetic visiter.
I cannot help, too, regretting that the poet’s study should now be
converted into a common bed-room; and most of all, that the antique
fountain which stood in front of the abbey, and makes so strong a
feature in the very graphic picture of the place drawn in Don Juan,
should be removed. It now adorns the inner quadrangle, or cloister
court, and is certainly a very beautiful object there, as may be seen by
the print in Murray’s edition of Byron’s Works. I do not wonder at
Colonel Wildman desiring to grace this court with a fountain, but I
wonder extremely at his gracing it with _this_ fountain. I must for ever
deplore its removal, as the breaking up of that most vivid picture of
the front, given by the poet to all posterity:--
A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile,
While yet the church was Rome’s, stood half apart,
In a grand arch, which once screened many an aisle.
These last had disappeared--a loss to art;
The first yet frowned superbly o’er the soil,
And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,
Which mourned the power of time’s or tempest’s march,
In gazing on that venerable arch.
Within a niche nigh to its pinnacle,
Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone:
And these had fallen, not when the friars fell,
But in the war which struck Charles from his throne.
* * * * *
But in a higher niche, alone, but crowned,
The Virgin Mother of the God-born Child,
With her son in her blessed arms, looked round,
Spared by some chance, when all beside was spoiled;
She made the earth below seem holy ground.
This may be superstition weak, or wild;
But even the painted relics of a shrine
Of any worship, wake some thoughts divine.
A mighty window, hollow in the centre;
Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings,
Through which the deepened glories once could enter,
Streaming from off the sun like seraph’s wings,
Now yawns all desolate: now loud, now fainter,
The gale sweeps through its fretwork; and oft sings
The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire
Lie with their hallelujahs quenched like fire.
Amid the court a Gothic fountain played,
Symmetrical, but decked with carvings quaint--
Strange faces, like to men in masquerade,
And here, perhaps, a monster, there a saint:
The spring gushed through grim mouths, of granite made,
And sparkled into basins, where it spent
Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles,
Like man’s vain glory, and his vainer troubles.
It was seeing how exactly all this was a copy of the original--how there
stood the mighty window, shewing through it the garden and dog’s
tomb--how the Virgin there still stood aloft with her child, distinct,
bold, and beautiful--but the fountain was gone, that we could not help
loudly expressing our regret. When the valet who attended us came to the
inner court, “There,” he said, “you see is the fountain--it is all
there, quite perfect.” “Yes, yes,” we could not help replying, “that is
the very thing we are sorry for--its being all there. A man might cut
off his nose, and put it in his pocket, and when any one wondered at his
mutilated face, cry, ‘O, it is all here; I have it in my pocket.’ The
mischief would be, that it was in the wrong place, and his face spoiled
for ever.” To every visiter of taste, the abbey front must be thus
injured whilst it and the poet’s description of it last together.
These are things to regret; for the rest, the place is a very pleasant
place. The new stone-work is very substantially and well done; there is
a great deal of modern elegance about the house; a fortune must have
been spent upon it. The grounds before the new front are extremely
improved; and the old gardens, with very correct feeling, have been
suffered to retain their ancient character. An oak planted by Lord Byron
is shewn; and why should he not have a tree as well as Shakspeare,
Milton, and Johnson? The initials of himself and his sister upon a tree
in the satyr-grove at the end of the garden, are said to have been
pointed out by his sister herself, the Honourable Mrs. Leigh, on her
visit there some time ago. The tree has two boles issuing from one root,
a very appropriate emblem of their consanguinity.
The scenery around presents many features that recal incidents in his
life, or passages in his poems. There are the houses where Fletcher and
Rushton lived--the two followers of his, who are addressed in the ballad
in the first canto of Childe Harold, beginning at the third stanza--
Come hither, hither, my little page:
But in the progress of improvement, the mill, where he used to be
weighed, is just now destroyed. Down the valley, in front of the abbey,
is a rich prospect over woods, and around are distant slopes scattered
with young plantations, that in time will add eminently to the beauty of
this secluded spot; and supply the place, in some degree, of those old
and magnificent woods in which the abbey was formerly embosomed.
Here ended our ramble, having gone over ground and through places that
the genius of one man in a brief life has sanctified to all times; for
like us--
Hither romantic pilgrims shall betake
Themselves from distant lands. When we are still
In centuries of sleep, his fame will wake,
And his great memory with deep feelings fill
These scenes that he has trod, and hallow every hill.
Here too we leave the Old Houses of England, in the words of John
Evelyn:--“Other there are, sweet and delectable country-seats and villas
of the noblesse, and rich and opulent gentry, built and environed with
parks, paddocks, plantations, etc.: adapted to country and rural seats,
dispersed through the whole nation, conspicuous, not only for the
structure of their houses, built upon the best rules of architecture,
but for situation, gardens, canals, walks, avenues, parks, forests,
ponds, prospects, and vistas; groves, woods, and large plantations; and
other the most charming and delightful recesses, natural and artificial;
but to enumerate and describe what were extraordinary in these and the
rest would furnish volumes, for who has not either seen, admired, or
heard of--
Audley-End, Althorpe, Auckland, Aqualate-Hall, Alnwick, Allington,
Ampthill, Astwell, Aldermaston, Aston, Alveston, Alton-Abbey.
Bolsover, Badminster, Breckley, Burghly-on-the-Hill, and the other
Burghly, Breton, Buckhurst, Buckland, Belvoir, Blechington, Blenheim,
Blythfield, Bestwood, Broomhall, Beaudesert.
Castle-Rising, Castle-Ashby, Castle-Donnington, Castle-Howard,
Chatsworth, Chartley, Cornbury, Cashiobury, Cobham, Cowdrey,
Caversham, Cranbourn-Park, Clumber, Charlton, Copt-Hall, Claverton,
famous for Sir William Bassett’s vineyard, producing forty hogsheads
of wine yearly; nor must I forget that of Deepden, planted by the
Honourable Charles Howard, of Norfolk, my worthy neighbour in Surrey.
Drayton, Donnington-Park, Dean.
Eastwell, Euston, Eccleswould, Edscombe, Easton, Epping.
Falston, Flankford, Fonthill, Fountains-Abbey.
Greystock, Goodrick, Grooby, Grafton, Gayhurst, Golden-Grove.
Hardwick, Hadden, Hornby, Hatfield, Haland, Heathfield, Hinton,
Holme-Pierrepont, Horstmounceaux, Houghton.
Ichinfield, Ilam, Ingestre.
Kirby, Knowsley, Keddleston.
Longleat, Latham, Lensal, Latimer, Lyne-Hall, Lawnsborough.
Morepark, Mulgrave, Marlborough, Margum, Mount Edgcombe.
Normanby, North-Hall, Norborough, Newnham, Newstead.
St. Ostlo, Oxnead.
Petworth, Penshurst, Paston-Hall.
Quorndon, Quickswood.
Ragland, Retford, Ragley, Ricot, Rockingham, Raby.
Sherbourn, Sherley, Swallowfield, Stanton-Harold, Shasford, Shaftbury,
Shugborough, Sandon, Stowe, Stansted, Scots-Hall, Sands of the Vine.
Theobalds, Thornkill, Thornhill, Trentham.
Up-Park.
Wilton, Wrest, Woburn, Wollaton, Worksop-Manor, Woodstock, which, as
Camden tells us, was the first park in England, Wimburn, Writtle-Park,
Warwick-Castle, Wentworth.”
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VIII.
CHARACTERISTICS OF PARK SCENERY.
How delicious is our old park scenery! How wise that such places as
Richmond, Greenwich, and such old parks in the neighbourhood of the
Metropolis, are kept up and kept open, that our citizens may
occasionally get out of the smoke and noise of the great Babel, and
breathe all their freshness, and feel all their influence! Who does not
often, in the midst of brick-and-mortar regions, summon up before his
imagination this old park or forest scenery? The ferny or heathy slopes,
under old, stately, gnarled oaks, or thorns as old, with ivy having
stems nearly as thick as their own, climbing up them, and clinging to
them, and sometimes incorporating itself so completely with their heads,
as to make them look entirely ivy-trees. The footpaths, with turf short
and soft as velvet, running through the bracken. The sunny silence that
lies on the open glades and brown uplands; the cool breezy feeling under
the shade; the grashopper _chithering_ amongst the bents; the hawk
hovering and whimpering over-head; the keeper lounging along in
velveteen jacket, and with his gun, at a distance, or firing at some
destructive bird. The herds of deer, fallow or red, congregated beneath
the shadow of the trees, or lying in the sun if not too warm, their
quick ears and tails keeping up a perpetual twinkle; the belling of
scattered deer, as they go bounding and mincing daintily across the
openings, here and there,--the old ones hoarse and deep, the young
shrill and plaintive. Cattle with whisking tails, grazing sedately; the
woodpecker’s laughter from afar; the little tree-creeper running up the
ancient boles, always beginning at the bottom, and going upwards with a
quick, gliding, progress--the quaint cries of other birds and wild
creatures, the daws and the rooks feeding together, and mingling their
different voices of pert and grave accent. The squirrel running with
extended tail along the ground, or flourishing it over his head, as he
sits on the tree; or fixing himself, when suddenly come upon, in the
attitude of an old, brown, decayed branch by the tree side, as
motionless as the deadest branch in the forest. The hum of insects all
around you, the low still murmur of sunny music,
Nature’s ceaseless hum,
Voice of the desert, never dumb.
The pheasant’s crow; the pheasant with all her brood springing around
you, one by one, from the turf where you are standing amid the
bracken--here one! there one! close under your feet, with a sudden,
startling whirr,--to compare nature with art, country scenes with city
ones, like so many squibs and crackers fired off about you in smart
succession, where you don’t look for them. That most ancient and most
original of all ladders, a bough with some pegs driven through it,
reared against a tree for the keeper to reach the nests of hawks or
magpies, or to fetch down a brood of young jackdaws for a pie, quite as
savoury a dish as one made with young rooks or pigeons; or for him to
sit aloft amongst the foliage, and watch for the approach of deer, or
fawn, when he is commissioned to shoot one. The profound and basking
silence all around you, as you sit on some dry ferny mound, and look far
and wide through the glimmering heat, or the cool shadow. The far-off
sounds--rooks telling of some old Hall that stands slumberously amid the
woods; or dogs, sending from their hidden kennel amongst the trees,
their sonorous yelling. Forest smells, that rise up deliciously as you
cross dim thickets or tread the spongy turf all fragrant with thyme, and
sprinkled with the light harebell. Huge limbs of oak riven off by
tempests, or the old oak itself, a vast, knotty, and decayed mass, lying
on the ground, and perhaps the woodman gravely labouring upon it,
lopping its boughs, riving its huge, misshapen stem, piling it in stacks
of cord-wood, or binding them into billets. The keeper’s house near, in
its own paled enclosure; and all about, old thorns hung with the dried
and haggard remains of wild-cats, polecats, weasels, hawks, owls, jays,
and other _vermin_, as he deems them; or the same most picturesquely
displayed on the sturdy boles of the vast oaks; and lastly, the mere,
the lake, in the depth of the woodlands, shrouded in screening masses of
flags and reeds, the beautiful flowering-rush, the magnificent great
water-dock, with leaves as huge and green as if they grew by some Indian
river--the tall club-mace, the thousands of wild-ducks, teals, or
wigeons, that start up at your approach with clattering wings, and cries
of quick alarm.
Who that has wandered through our old parks and forests, is not familiar
with all these sights and sounds? does not long to witness them again,
ever and anon, when he has been “long in city pent,” till he is fain to
mount his horse and ride off into some such ancient, quiet, and dreamy
region, as Crabbe suddenly mounted his, and rode forty miles to see
again the sea?
[Illustration]
PART IV.
CAUSES OF THE STRONG ATTACHMENT OF THE ENGLISH TO COUNTRY LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
THE LOVE OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE MORE EMINENTLY DEVELOPED
IN MODERN LITERATURE THAN IN THE CLASSICAL.
One of the most conspicuous features of English literature, is that
intense love of the sublime and beautiful in Nature, which pervades,
with a living spirit, the works of our poets; gives so peculiar a charm
to the writings of our naturalists; possesses great prominence in our
travellers; is mingled with the fervent breathings of our religious
treatises; and even finds its way into the volumes of our philosophy. If
we look into the literature of the continental nations, we find it
existing there, more or less, but in a lower tone than in our own; if we
look back into that of the ancients, we find it there too, but still
fainter, more confined in its scope, and scattered, as it were, into
distant and isolated spots. I think nothing can be more striking than
the truth of this; and it is a curious matter of observation, that there
should be this great distinction, and of inquiry whence it has arisen.
The love of the beauty and sublimity of Nature is an inherent principle
in the human soul; but like all other of our finer qualities, it is
later in its development than the common ones, and requires, not
repression, but fostering and cultivation. It is like the love of the
fine arts; it slumbers in the bosom that passes through life in its
native rudeness. It lies in the unploughed ground of the human mind,--a
seed buried below the influence that alone can call it into activity.
Yes, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea;
Like the man’s thoughts, dark in the infant brain;
Like aught that is, which wraps what is to be;
there it lies, deep in the soil of common events and cares, and
untouched by the divine atmosphere of knowledge which a more easy and
advanced condition brings with it. In others, it is partially vivified,
but cannot flourish; it is choked with the cares of the world, and the
deceitfulness of riches; but in minds that are fed with substantial
knowledge, and have their intellectual power reached, and their
affections kindled by the blessedness of refined and Christian
culture,--then it grows with their growth and strengthens with their
strength. It daily enlarges its grasp, and its appetite; it expands
perpetually the circle of its horizon. The love of the fine arts is but
a modification of this great passion. Their objects are the same--the
sublime and the beautiful; and the same purity and elevation of taste
accompany them both. This is the original and legitimate passion. In our
love of the fine arts, our attention is occupied with human imitations
of what is beautiful in nature;--in this, we fix our admiration at once
on the magnificent works of the Great Artist of the Universe.
We might, therefore, reasonably expect to find in the literature of the
ancients, what is actually the case, a less refined, less expanded, less
penetrating and absorbing existence of this affection. Everywhere the
love of nature must exist. In all ages and all countries, so is the
outward universe framed to influence the inward, that men must be
impressed by the grandeur of creation, and attracted by its beauty, so
far as the human is at all advanced beyond the limits of mere animal
existence. But in the ancient world education was never popular; it
extended only to a few; and of these few a majority were occupied in the
pursuits of art, or the speculations of philosophy; and poetry, and
especially the poetry of nature, had scanty followers. The great poets
of all ages, even of those but semi-civilized, must necessarily have
minds so sensitive to the influence of all kinds of beauty that they
could not help being alive to that of nature; and this was the case with
the great poets of Greece. We put out of the present question the
dramatic and lyrical ones; for to them the passions and interests of men
were the engrossing objects; but in Homer, Hesiod, and Theocritus, we
may fairly expect to discover the amount of the ancients’ perception of
natural beauty, and their love of it. But in these how far is it behind
what it is in the moderns. They were often enraptured with the
pleasantness of nature, but it was seldom with more than its
pleasantness. Their Elysian Fields are composed of flowery meads, with
pleasant trees and running waters, where the happy spirits led a life of
luxurious repose. Their celebrated Arcadia is faithfully described in
such Idyllia as those of Bion and Moschus;--youths and damsels feeding
their flocks amid the charms of a pastoral country, to whose beauties
they were alive in proportion as they ministered to luxurious enjoyment.
Beyond this they seldom looked;--seldom describe the sublime aspects and
phenomena of the universe. Homer, indeed, is the greatest
exception,--his soul was cast in a mighty mould. His beautiful
description of a moonlight night is known to all readers. He speaks,
too, of the splendour of the starry heavens; and he describes tempests
with great majesty; but this rather as they are terrible in their
effects on men, than as sublime in themselves. Minds even of the noblest
class had not arrived at that full comprehension of nature which sees
sublimity in the gloom and terror of tempests, independent of their
effects; the grandeur of beauty in desolation itself; in splintered
mountains, wild wildernesses, and the awfulness of solitude. They had
not become tremblingly alive to all the lesser traces and shades of
beauty in the face of nature, for they had not reached either of the
extremities of perception--the vast on one hand--minute perfection on
the other. They did not pursue the forms of beauty into leaf and flower;
into the cheerful culture of the field, or the brown tinges of the
desert. They did not watch the growing or fading lights of the sky, and
the colours, as they lived or died on the distant mountain tops;--the
passing of light and shadow over earth and ocean. Their acquaintance
with the subtle spirit of the universe had not become so intimate. They
abode most in the general; they admired in the mass; for they had not
arrived at the refinement of very delicate, or extensive analysis; and
they did not go out to admire as the moderns; their admiration of nature
was not advanced, as with us, into an art and a passion. Beauty rather
fell upon their senses than was inquired after. They were pleased, and
did not always seek out the operative causes of their sensations. Their
mention of their delight was, therefore, generally incidental. They were
in the condition and state of mind of the old man in Wordsworth’s
ballad, who says--
Think you, mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?
That Homer had an eye for the sublime features of earth, the nobler
forms of animal life, and phenomena of nature,--his bold and beautiful
similes, scattered all through the Iliad, of storms, of overflowing
rivers, of forests on flame, of the lion, the horse, and others,
sufficiently testify; that he had a most exquisite sense of the
picturesque, is shewn in almost every page of the Odyssey; in the cave
of Polypheme; in good old king Laertes occupied in his farm; and in the
whole episode of Ulysses at the lodge of Eumeus, the goatherd. But yet
it is, after all, only in contemplating some scene of delicious rural
beauty, something akin to Arcadian sweetness, that he breaks out into
anything like a rapture. The abode of Calypso, as seen by Hermes on his
approach to it, is an exact instance.
Then, swift ascending from the azure wave,
He took the path that winded to the cave.
Large was the grot in which the nymph he found,
The fair-haired nymph, with every beauty crowned.
She sate and sung; the rocks resound the lays;
The cave was brightened with the rising blaze;
Cedar and frankincense, an odorous pile,
Flamed on the hearth, and wide perfumed the isle,
While she with work and song the time divides,
And through the loom the golden shuttle guides.
Without the grot a various sylvan scene
Appeared around, and groves of living green;
Poplars and alders, ever quivering, played,
And nodding cypress formed a grateful shade;
On whose high branches, waving with the storm,
The birds of broadest wing their mansion form;
The chough, the sea-mew, and loquacious crow,
And scream aloft, and skim the deeps below.
Depending vines the delving caverns screen,
With purple clusters blushing through the green.
Four limpid fountains from the clefts distil;
And every fountain forms a separate rill,
In mazy, winding wanderings down the hill:
Where bloomy meads with vivid greens were crowned,
And glowing violets threw odours round--
A scene, where if a god should cast his sight,
A god might gaze and wander with delight!
Joy touched the messenger of heaven; he stayed
Entranced, and all the blissful haunt surveyed.
_Odyssey_, B. v.
In Hesiod, the perception of even the delights of the summer field were
far fainter. Though he fed his flock at the foot of Mount Helicon, he
has little to say in praise of its aspect; and though he gives you great
insight into the state of agriculture, and the simple mode of life of
the country people, a very few verses furnish almost all the praise of
nature which he had to bestow. His mind seemed occupied in tracing the
genealogy of the gods, and framing grave maxims for the regulation of
human conduct.
Of all the Greek writers, Theocritus is the one that luxuriates most in
natural beauty. His sense of the picturesque is keen, and his penciling
of such subjects is most vigorous and graphic. His two fishermen remind
us of Crabbe; nothing can be more exquisite.
Two ancient fishers in a straw-thatched shed--
Leaves were their walls, and sea-weed was their bed,
Reclined their weary limbs; hard by were laid
Baskets and all their implements of trade;
Rods, hooks, and lines composed of stout horse-hairs,
And nets of various sorts, and various snares,
The seine, the cast-net, and the wicker maze,
To waste the watery tribe a thousand ways;
A crazy boat was drawn upon a plank;
Mats were their pillow, wove of osiers dank;
Skins, caps, and coats, a rugged covering made;
This was their wealth, their labour and their trade.
No pot to boil, no watch-dog to defend,
Yet blessed they lived with penury their friend;
None visited their shed, save, every tide,
The wanton waves that washed its tottering side.
_Idyl._ xxi.
Then again, nothing can be more picturesque, nothing more boldly graphic
and solemnly poetical, than the situation in which he makes Castor and
Pollux find Anycus, the king of Bebrycia; nothing more striking than the
image of that chief.
Meanwhile, the royal brothers devious strayed
Far from the shore, and sought the cooling shade.
Hard by, a hill with waving forests crowned,
Their eyes attracted; in the dale they found
A spring perennial in a rocky cave:
Full to the margin flowed the lucid wave;
Below small fountains gushed, and murmuring near,
Sparkled like silver, and as silver clear.
Above, tall pines and poplars quivering played,
And planes and cypress in dark greens arrayed;
Around balm-breathing flowers of every hue,
The bees’ ambrosia, in the meadows grew.
There sate a chief, tremendous to the eye,
His couch the rock, his canopy the sky;
The gauntlet’s strokes his cheeks and ears around,
Had marked his face with many a desperate wound.
Round as a globe, and prominent his chest,
Broad was his back, but broader was his breast;
Firm was his flesh, with iron sinews fraught,
Like some Colossus on an anvil wrought.
_Id._ xxii.
His description of an ancient drinking-cup appears to me to have no
rival in all the round of literature, ancient or modern, except Keats’
description of an antique vase. It is life and beauty itself. The
figures stand out in bold relief, cut with an energy and precision most
wonderful, and with a grace that makes itself felt to the very depths of
the spirit.
A deep, two-handled cup, whose brim is crowned
With ivy, joined with helichryse around;
Small tendrils with close-clasping arms uphold
The fruit rich speckled with the seeds of gold.
Within, a woman’s well-wrought image shines,
A vest her limbs, her locks a cawl confines;
And near, two neat-curled youths in amorous strains,
With fruitless strife communicate their pains;
Smiling, by turns she views the rival pair;
Grief swells their eyes, their heavy hearts despair.
Hard by, a fisherman, advanced in years,
On the rough margin of a rock appears;
Intent he stands to enclose the fish below,
Lifts a large net, and labours with the throw;
Such strong expression rises on the sight,
You’d swear the man exerted all his might;
For his round neck with turgid veins appears--
_In years he seems, yet not impaired by years_.
A vineyard next with intersected lines,--
And red, ripe clusters load the bending vines.
To guard the fruit a boy sits idly by,
In ambush near two skulking foxes lie;
This, plots the branches of ripe grapes to strip,
And that, more daring, meditates the scrip;
Resolved, ere long, to seize the savoury prey,
And send the youngster dinnerless away;
Meanwhile on rushes all his art he plies,
In framing traps for grashoppers and flies;
And earnest only on his own designs,
Forgets his satchel, and neglects his vines.
_Id._ i.
What a glorious subject would this be for one of our modern sculptors.
But in Theocritus, as in Homer, they are Arcadian amenities that engross
almost all his passion for nature. They are flowery fields, running
waters, summer shades, and the hum of bees; all the elements of
voluptuous dreaming and indolent entrancement; the most delicious of all
idleness, lying abroad with the blue sky above you, and the mossy turf
beneath you, and the bubble of running waters, and the whisper of forest
branches near, to lull you to repose. Is it not so? When is it that he
invites you to out-of-door enjoyment?
Now when meridian beams inflame the day;
Now when green lizards in the hedges lie;
And crested larks forsake the fervid sky.
_Id._ vii.
And whither would he lead you at this sultry, blazing hour? Ah! hear
him!
Here rest we: lo! cyperus decks the ground,
Oaks lend their shade, and sweet bees murmur round
Their honeyed hives; here, two cool fountains spring;
Here merrily the birds on branches sing;
Here pines in clusters more umbrageous grow,
Wave high their heads, and scatter cones below.
_Id._ v.
Ah! cunning Sicilian! well didst thou know where life shed its most
delicious dreams. Anacreon at his wine, and Tibullus in the rapture of
one of his sweetest love-visions, was a novice in true enjoyment to
thee. Hark! to the very sounds which he conjures up! There is nothing
startling--nothing exciting.--No! there is enough of excitement already
in the climate, in the summer heat, in the very scenes and persons from
whose city revels he has just withdrawn. The true secret now is, to
summon up only images of luxurious rest; of calm beauty; of refreshing
coolness; that the blood, already running riot, may flow in the veins
like the nectar of the gods, and send up to the brain images and trains
of images of the very poetry of Elysium. Hark to the sounds about you!
Sweet low the herds along the pastured ground;
Sweet is the vocal reed’s melodious sound;
Sweet pipes the jocund herdsman.
But I will give one more extract from him, which seems to combine all
the fascinations he loved to paint as existing in the summer woodlands.
He courteous bade us on soft beds recline,
Of lentesch and young branches of the vine;
Poplars and elms above their foliage spread,
Lent a cool shade, and waved the breezy head.
Below, a stream, from the nymphs’ sacred cave,
In free meanders led its murmuring wave;
In the warm sunbeams, verdant shrubs among,
Shrill grashoppers renewed their plaintive song;
At distance far, concealed in shades alone,
The nightingale poured forth her tuneful moan:
The lark, the goldfinch, warbled lays of love,
And sweetly pensive cooed the turtle-dove;
While honey-bees, for ever on the wing,
Hummed round the flowers, and sipped the silver spring.
The rich, ripe season gratified the sense
With summer’s sweets and autumn’s redolence.
Apples and pears lay strewed in heaps around,
And the plum’s loaded branches kissed the ground.
_Id._ vii.
Well, we must pass over from the Greeks to the Romans, and I have found
it so difficult to escape from Theocritus, that we must make short work
of it here. Of Cicero, Seneca, the Plinys,--I will say nothing. We all
know how they delighted in their country villas and gardens. We all know
how Cicero, in his Treatise on Old Age, has declared his fondness for
farming; and how, between his pleadings in the Forum, he used to seek
the refreshment of a walk in a grove of plane-trees. We know how, during
the best ages of the Commonwealth, their generals and dictators were
brought from the plough and their country retreats--a fine feature in
the Roman character, and one which may, in part, account for their so
long retaining the simplicity of their tastes, and that high tone of
virtue which generally accompanies a daily intercourse with the spirit
of nature. All this we know; but what is still more remarkable is, that
Horace and Virgil, two of the most courtly poets that ever existed, yet
were both passionately fond of the country, and perpetually declare in
their writings that there is nothing in the splendour and fascinations
of city life, to compare with the serene felicity of a rural one. Horace
is perpetually rejoicing over his Sabine farm; and Virgil has, in his
Georgics, described all the rural economy of the age with a gusto that
is felt in every line. His details fill us with admiration at the great
resemblance of the science of these matters at that time, and at this.
With scarcely an exception, in all modes of rural management, in all
kinds of farming stock--sheep, cattle, and horses, he would be now
pronounced a consummate judge; and his rules for the culture of fields
and gardens, would serve for studies here, notwithstanding the
difference of the Italian and English climates. But it is only in that
celebrated passage beginning--
O fortunatos nimiùm, sua si bona nôrint,
Agricolas!
in his second Georgic, so often quoted, that he seems to get into a
rapture when contemplating the charms of a country life. We may take
this as a sufficient example, and as very delightful in itself.
Oh happy, if he knew his happy state,
The swain who free from business and debate,
Receives his easy food from Nature’s hand,
And just returns of cultivated land.
No palace with a lofty gate he wants,
To admit the tide of early visitants,
With eager eyes, devouring as they pass,
The breathing figures of Corinthian brass;
No statues threaten from high pedestals,
No Persian arras hides his homely walls
With antic vests, which, through their shadowy fold,
Betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold.
He boasts no wool where native white is dyed
With purple poison of Assyrian pride.
No costly drugs of Araby defile,
With foreign scents, the sweetness of his oil:
But easy quiet, a secure retreat,
A harmless life that knows not how to cheat,
With home-bred plenty the rich owner bless,
And rural pleasures crown his happiness.
Unvexed with quarrels, undisturbed by noise,
The country king his peaceful realm enjoys.
* * * *
Ye sacred Muses! with whose beauty fired,
My soul is ravished, and my brain inspired--
Whose priest I am, whose holy fillets wear--
Would you your poet’s first petition hear;
Give me the way of wandering stars to know,
The depths of heaven above, and earth below.
* * * *
But if my heavy blood restrain the flight
Of my free soul, aspiring to the height
Of nature, and unclouded fields of light--
My next desire is, void of care and strife,
To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life--
A country cottage near a crystal flood,
A winding valley, and a lofty wood.
Some god conduct me to the sacred shades
Where Bacchanals are sung by Spartan maids;
Or lift me high to Hemus’ hilly crown,
Or in the plains of Tempe lay me down,
Or lead me to some solitary place,
And cover my retreat from human race.
Turn now to the modern world of literature; and what a blaze of light,
what a warmth, what a spirit, what a passion bursts upon us! We step,
indeed, into a new world. All here is glowing, clear in view, tender in
feeling; full of a new, profound, popular, and yet domestic sentiment--a
sentiment befitting “the large utterance of the early gods,” and yet
hallowing and making more brotherly the bosoms of men. We are, in fact,
as far advanced beyond the ancients in our knowledge of nature, as we
are in that of “the life and immortality brought to light by the
gospel.” With all the admiration of the ancients for the loveliness of
nature, with all their enjoyment of its amenities, what is there in them
like the hungering and thirsting, the yearning after her, of such hearts
as those of Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and a thousand other
lights of modern literature? The mighty difference is, indeed, most
strikingly manifested by comparing Longinus and Burke. The Palmyrian
secretary, amongst his five sources of the sublime, does not even
include the influence of natural objects. His treatise is, indeed, more
truly a treatise on writing strongly and elegantly, than on the sublime.
Like the poets, he perceives the amenities of the country; but there is
only one passage in his whole work in which he speaks out plainly of the
sublimity of external nature. “The impulse of nature inclines to admire
not a little transparent rivulet that ministers to our necessities; but
the Nile, the Ister, the Rhine, or still more, the Ocean. We are never
surprised at the sight of a small fire that burns clearly, and blazes
out on our private hearth; but view with amaze the celestial fires,
though they are often obscured by vapours and eclipses. Nor do we reckon
anything in nature more wonderful than the boiling furnaces of Etna,
which cast out stones, and sometimes whole rocks from their labouring
abyss, and pour out whole rivers of liquid and unmingled flame.”
See how Burke has expanded and worked out this glimpse of the true view.
He is full of the mighty influence of Nature’s sublime features. Her
heights and depths, her horrors and glooms, the demonstrations of her
power and grandeur in storms, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Infinity and
Eternity are all before him in their awful majesty, and furnish him with
some of his deepest sources and most splendid illustrations of the
sublime.
But the fact must be evident to every one. A single glance from the
ancients to the moderns, and what a contrast! Throughout all the
writings of the most enthusiastic ancients, where are the burning,
passionate longings after nature that are transfused through all our
modern literature? Nature is not with us a thing incidentally alluded
to,--a thing to be voluptuously enjoyed when we find ourselves in the
flowery lap of May; ours is a living, permeating, perpetual affection.
We seek after communion with her as one of the highest enjoyments of our
existence; we seek it to soothe the ruffling of our spirits; to calm our
world-vexed hearts; to fill us with the divine presence and
overshadowing of beauty. The love of her is with us a daily attraction;
the knowledge of her a daily pursuit; we have advanced her cognizance
and admiration into a science. Our naturalists feel the breathings of a
celestial spirit come from her secret shrines, even while they are
seeking after and arranging her lesser forms and productions. Our
romance writers dip their pens in her hues to cast a fascination upon
their narratives; and our travellers climb every mountain, traverse
every sea, explore every distant region, to catch fresh glimpses of her
beauty. True, many of these may not, and do not, feel all the attachment
they profess--there are thousands who do but affect it, as they do any
other fashion; but their very imitation, and their very number, do
homage to the great worship of the age.
But it is through our poetry that the admiration of nature is diffused
as one great soul. From Chaucer to the most recent poet, it is the
universal spirit. It would seem a contradiction now, to say that a man
is a poet, but that he has no ardent feeling for nature. In fact, a new
language, a new kind of inspiration, distinguish the modern poets from
the ancients altogether. Great as each may respectively be, their
object, their vision, and their tone in this particular, are widely
opposed. When do we find one of the classical writers, speaking thus of
his youth?
Like a roe
I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then,
To me was all in all--I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms were then to me
An appetite, a feeling, and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed of the eye.
_Wordsworth._
We should be startled to hear an ancient exclaim, like Shelley:
Magnificent!
How glorious art thou earth! And if thou be
The shadow of some spirit lovelier still,
Though evil stain its work, and it should be,
Like its creation, weak yet beautiful,
I could fall down and worship that and thee.
Even now my heart adoreth. Wonderful!
What would be our astonishment, if we were to stumble in an ancient
poet, upon stanzas like these?
I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture; I can see
Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,
And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
Of ocean or the stars, mingle and not in vain.
And thus I am absorbed, and this is life!
I look upon the peopled desert past,
As on a place of agony and strife
Where for some sin, to sorrow I was cast.
To act and suffer, but remount at last
With a fresh pinion; which I feel to spring,
Though young, yet waxing vigorous, as the blast
Which it would cope with, on delighted wing
Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling.
And when, at length, the mind shall all be free
From what it hates in this degraded form,
Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be
Existent happier in the fly and worm,--
When elements to elements conform,
And dust is what it should be, shall I not
Feel all I see, less dazzling, but more warm?
The bodiless thought, the spirit of each spot,
Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot?
Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them?
Is not the love of these deep in my heart
With a pure passion? Shall I not contemn
All objects, if compared with these? and stem
A tide of suffering rather than forego
Such feelings, for the hard and worldly phlegm
Of those whose eyes are only turned below,
Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts that dare not glow?
To quote all that bears evidence of this wonderful revolution in the
very heart of literature would be, not to quote indeed, but to take the
whole mass of modern poetry. Powerfully as the spirit of the ancients
was attracted by the sublimity of mortal passion and mortal fortunes; by
the strife of families and nations, by the strife of emotions in the
soul, and the out-bursting of a blasting or a beneficent sublimity in
the deeds of men; and magnificent as are the monuments of tragic or
heroic grandeur they have erected on this foundation,--so powerfully is
the spirit of the moderns drawn, excited, and inflamed by the sublimity
of nature, and beautiful and endearing are the strains it has elicited.
And whence is this mighty change? Ay, that is the question. Whence is it
that the love of Nature has, in the latter ages, become so much more
passionate, intense, engrossing, refined, elevated, etherealized? Is it
because we see Nature with different eyes? Is it that we see something
in it that the classics did not? It is! It is to that omnipotent
principle that has so utterly changed the whole system of human
philosophy, morals, politics, literature, and social life--the hopes,
the fortunes, the reasonings of men, that we owe it. IT IS TO
CHRISTIANITY! The veil which was rent asunder in the hour that its
Divine Founder consummated his mission, was plucked away not only from
the heart of man, not only from the immortality of his being, but from
the face of Nature. A mystery and a doubt which had hung athwart the sky
like a vast and gloomy cloud, was withdrawn, and man beheld Creation as
the assured work of God: saw a parental hand guiding, sustaining, and
embellishing it: and immediately felt himself brought into a near
kinship with it, and into an everlasting sympathy with all that was
beautiful around him,--not simply for the beauty itself, but because it
was the work of the one Great Father--the one Great Fountain of all life
and blessing.
The very introduction to the Hebrew literature in the Old Testament,
must have produced a deep and delightful change in human feeling. The
contrast between the sentiment and the very language of nature, as
addressed to man in the literature of the Greeks and that of the
Hebrews, was startling, warming and wonderful beyond measure. The beauty
of natural objects was no longer a thing apart;--a thing to be admired
on its own account; it was allied to a deep sentiment, it became linked
to the life of our inner nature. Waters were beheld as the bountiful
blessing of Him “who giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon
the field.” They became the emblem of that inward purity of which the
noblest pagan could form no adequate conception, but which the God of
the Hebrews required. They symbolized many of the evils, as well as the
refreshments of life. Now they typified, “brethren that deal deceitfully
as a brook, and as the stream of brooks that pass away; which are
brackish by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow is hid:” now, they
were as the billows of affliction,--scenes of trouble--“all thy billows
have gone over me:” and now they were as the refreshment of a thirsty
soul. The greenness of the grass and of the branch pointed to the
beauty, the fleeting beauty of life; and now to the insecure prosperity
of the unjust:--“He is green before the sun, and his branch shooteth
forth in his garden; his roots are wrapped about the heap, and he seeth
the place of stones. If he destroy him from his place, then it shall
deny him, saying I have not seen him. Behold this is the joy of his way,
and out of the earth shall others grow.”
Every thing in nature, the flower--the wind--the spider’s web--darkness
and light--calm and tempest--drought and flood--the shadow and the
noon-day heat--a great rock in a weary land--every thing about us, and
above us, acquired in this splendid and inimitable literature, a new and
touching meaning; a meaning bound up with our lives; a worth coeval
with our highest hopes, or most fervent desires. Every thing became a
moral and a warning. They were made to illustrate not only the
operations of providence, but to cast a new light upon our intellectual
being. They did not, indeed, speak out as to the exact value stamped
upon man by the Deity, but they gave intimations more profound and
startling than anything in the whole round of pagan philosophy. And
then, there was an undertone of sorrow, a voice of plaintive regret over
man--a delicacy and tenderness of phrase that wonderfully attracted and
endeared. What ineffable melancholy is there in these following
sentiments! What an intense longing after life, and yet, what a longing
for death! What a vivid feeling of the grinding evils of mortal being;
and what images of the fulness of peace in the grave!--“Why died I not
from the womb? For now should I have lain still, and been quiet; I
should have slept: then had I been at rest. With kings and counsellors
of the earth, which had built desolate places for themselves; or with
princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver; or, as a
hidden, untimely birth, I had not been; as infants which never saw the
light. There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary are at
rest. There the prisoners rest together, they hear not the voice of the
oppressor. The small and the great is there; and the servant is free
from his master. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery; and
life unto the bitter in soul? Which long for death, but it cometh not;
and dig for it more than for hid treasures? Which rejoice exceedingly,
and are glad when they can find the grave?” Job iii. 11-22.
But this new alliance with nature; this new and spiritual beauty cast
upon every thing, was not all. The magnificence of Creation and its
phenomena were made tenfold conspicuous; and still beyond this, men were
no longer left to suppose, or even to contend that the world was the
workmanship of Deity. They were no longer left to bewilder themselves
amongst a host of imaginary gods,--the universe in its majesty, and
God--the one sublime and eternal founder and preserver of it, were
flashed upon the spiritual vision in the broadest and brightest light.
Here was seen the clear and continuous history of Creation:--God, the
sole and immortal, sate upon the circle of the world, and its
inhabitants were as grashoppers before him. The sun, moon, and stars
were of his ordaining and appointing; night and day, times and seasons,
revolved before him; his were the cattle on a thousand hills; his all
the swarming tribes of humanity. The prophetic writings proclaimed his
deity, his power and attributes, in language unparalleled in splendour,
and with imagery which embraced all that is glorious, resplendent,
beautiful and soothing, or dark, desolate and withering, in nature.
Such was the effect of the Old Testament;--and then came the New!--then
came Christ! The Old shewed us the Deity in unspeakable majesty;--his
creation as beautiful and sublime;--Christ proclaimed him THE FATHER OF
MEN; and in those words poured on earth a new light. The words which
guaranteed the eternity of our spirits, chased a dimness from the sky
which had hung there from the days of Adam: they rent down the curtains
of death and oblivion, and let fall upon earth such a tide of sunshine
as never warmed it till then. The atmosphere of heaven gushed down to
earth. From that hour a new and inextinguishable interest was given us
in nature. It was the work of our Father: it was the birthplace of
millions of everlasting souls. Its hills and valleys then smiled in an
ethereal beauty, for they were then to our eyes spread out by a mighty
and tender parent for our happy abodes. The waters ran with a voice of
gladness; the clouds sailed over us with a new aspect of delight; the
wind blew, and the leaves fluttered in it, and whispered everywhere of
life--eternal consciousness--eternal enjoyment of intellect and of love.
Through all things we felt a portion of the divine, paternal Spirit
diffused, and “the wilderness and the solitary place” thenceforth had a
language for our hearts full of the holy peace and the revelations of
eternity. Then the musing poet felt, what it has been reserved for one
in our day only fully to express:--
A presence that disturbed him with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore is he still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth: of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half create
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of his purest thoughts; the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of his heart, and soul
Of all his moral being.
Thus, then, is dissipated the mystery of the more intense love of Nature
evinced by the moderns than the ancients. It is but part of that gift of
divine revelation which has endowed us with so many other advantages
over those grand old philosophers of antiquity, who in the depths of
their hearts, darkened and abused by many an hereditary superstition,
yet found some of the unquenched embers of that fire of love and
knowledge originally kindled there by the Creator, and cherished and
fanned them into a noble flame. Had they heard from heaven these living
words pronounced--GOD IS LOVE!--had they seen the great ladder of
revelation reared from earth to heaven, and been permitted to trace
every radiant step by which man is allowed to ascend from these lower
regions into the blaze of God’s own paradise, their spirits would have
kindled into as intense a glow as ours, and their vision have become as
conscious of surrounding glories. GOD IS LOVE! These are words of
miraculous power. Once assured that the very principle and source of all
life is love, and that it is destined to cast its beams on our heads
through eternal ages, we become filled with a felicity beyond the power
of earthly evil. All those intimations that creation itself had given
us, are confirmed. We feel the influence of the great principle of
beneficence in the joy of our own being; in the cheerfulness of
surrounding humanity; in the voices and songs of happy creatures; in the
face of earth, and the lights of heaven. Seas, mountains, and forests,
all become imbued with beauty as they are contemplated in love; and
their aspects and their sounds fill us with sensations of happiness.
When we read in the Phædon of Plato, the few and feeble grounds, as they
now appear to us, on which that good old Socrates raised his arguments
for the immortality of the soul; when we hear his exultation on
discovering in Anaxagoras the principle laid down, that “the divine
intellect was the cause of all beings,” we feel with what deep transport
he would have witnessed the gates of eternity set wide by the Divine
hand; and in what hues of heaven the very circumstance would have
invested all about him. Yes! the only difference between modern
literature and that of the ancients, lies in our grand advantage over
them in this particular. It is from the literature of the Bible, and the
heirship of immortality laid open to us in it, that we owe our enlarged
conceptions of natural beauty, and our quickened affections towards the
handiworks of God. We walk about the world as its true heirs, and heirs
of far more than it has to give. We walk about in confidence, in love,
and in peaceful hope; for we know that we are the rightful sons of the
house; and that neither death nor distance can interrupt our progress
towards the home-paradise of the Divine Father.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
THE PRE-EMINENCE OF THE LOVE OF NATURE IN THE ENGLISH LITERATURE OVER
THAT OF ALL OTHER MODERN NATIONS--THE PROMOTION OF THIS PASSION BY THE
WRITINGS OF PROFESSOR WILSON, IN BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE; AND BY THE
WOOD-CUTS OF BEWICK--MEANS OF STILL FURTHER ENCOURAGING IT.
In the former chapter I have endeavoured to point out the existence of a
striking difference as it regards the love of nature between the
classical and modern literature, and to explain, and I hope
successfully, the principal causes of it. But it is not the less true,
that almost as great a difference exists in this same respect between
our British literature, and that of almost all other modern nations. I
do not intend to go about very laboriously to attempt to prove this
fact, for I think it stands sufficiently self-evident on the face of all
modern literature. In science, in art, in history; philosophy, natural
and moral; in theological, philological and classical inquiries, the
continental nations have attained the highest honours. In biography the
French are unrivalled; in autobiography the Germans are equally so. In
some species of poetry the Germans contest the palm with us; in
mathematical industry, and historical research, they are greatly our
superiors; but with the solitary exceptions of Gesner, Sturm, and St.
Pierre, where have they any writers to range with our Evelyns, Whites,
and Waltons? or poets, with our Thomsons and Bloomfields? or indeed,
with the whole series of our poets who do not professedly write on the
country, but are irresistibly led to it; and from whom the love of it
breaks out on all occasions? In the French, the social feeling is the
most strongly developed; in the Italian, passion and fancy; in the
German, the metaphysical. The Germans, indeed, most strongly resemble
the English in their literary tastes. There seems to be a fellow-feeling
between them, resulting from ancient kinship. They have a similar
character of simplicity; they are alike grave, solid, and domestic, and
prone to deep and melancholy thought. They have a love of nature deep as
ours, for the tone of their minds makes them, in every thing they do
attach themselves to, earnest and enthusiastic. In every thing relating
to the affections, their literature is unrivalled; their feelings are
profound, tender, and spiritual; and while a false and superficial taste
has made rapid strides amongst us of late years--a taste for glitter,
shew, and fashion, the natural accompaniment of wealth and luxury, a
growing fondness for German literature must be hailed as a good omen; as
likely to give a new infusion of heart and mind to our writings; to
re-awaken our love for the simple, the domestic--the fireside love; in
fact, to bring us back to what was the ancient character of the English;
high-toned in morals, simple in manners, manly and affectionate in
heart. Their love of nature is as deep as ours; but it is not so equally
and extensively diffused. The solemn and speculative cast of their
genius has tended to link it with the gloom of forests and tempests, and
with the wild fictions of the supernatural, rather than to scatter it
over every cheerful field, and cause it to brood over every sunny
cottage-garden, amid the odour of flowers and the hum of bees. There is
something wonderfully attractive in their descriptions of the
old-fashioned homeliness of their rural and domestic manners; in the
unbustling quietness of their lives, and in the holy strength of their
family attachments. Such writings as that Idyl of Voss, describing the
manner of life of the venerable pastor of Grenau, the autobiographies of
Goethe and Stilling, seem to carry us back into the simple ages of our
own country. That which characterised them, seems to be preserved to the
present hour in Germany; and then, the affectionate intellectuality of
their minds, and their very language, so homely and yet so expressive,
cause them to abound in such touches of natural pathos as are nowhere
else to be found. Yet, when their love of nature exhibits itself in
descriptions of country life, amid all these charms, we are often
tempted to exclaim with the pastor’s wife in Voss, when in a pic-nic
party they discovered, while taking tea under the forest trees, that
they had forgotten the tea-spoons, and had to substitute pieces of stick
for them--“O, dear nature, thou art almost too natural!”
But the aspect of the different countries is sufficiently indicative of
the natural feeling. Instead of the solitary chateau, or baronial
castle, amid dark forests, or wide unfenced plains; instead of the great
landed proprietors crowding into large towns, and the very labourers
huddling themselves into villages, and going, as they do, in some parts
of France, seven or eight miles on asses to their daily work in the
fields, the hills and valleys of England are studded all over with the
dwellings of the landed gentry, and the cottages of their husbandmen.
Villas amid shrubberies and gardens; villages environed with
old-fashioned crofts; farm-houses and cottages, singly or in groups--a
continuous chain of cultivation and rustic residences stretches from end
to end and side to side of the island. Our wealthy aristocrats have
caught a fatal passion for burying themselves in the capital in a
perpetual turmoil of political agitations, ostentatious rivalry, and
dissipation--a passion fatal to their own happiness and to the whole
character of their minds; but the love of the country is yet strong
enough in large classes to maintain our pre-eminence in this respect.
The testimony of foreigners, however, is stronger than our own; and
foreigners are always struck with the garden-like aspect of England; and
the charms of our country houses. A number of a French literary paper,
“Le Panorama de Londres,” has fallen accidentally into my hands, while
writing this, which contains an article--De la Poesie Anglaise et de la
Poesie Allemande--from which I transcribe the following passages.
“England has produced her great epic poet, her great dramatic poet; and
the last age gave her reasoning poets in abundance. The time for the one
and the other is past. By a revolution, the causes of which it would be
difficult to trace, her poetry has changed both its character and
object; and strange enough, under the reign of a civilization the most
advanced, her poetry has returned to nature. At first, the fact strikes
us as an unaccountable anomaly; for what country owes so much to art as
England? The very aspect of the country shews everywhere the hand of
man. A scientific culture has changed its whole face. The forests have
ceased to be impenetrable; the rivers to be wild torrents; the mountains
themselves to be savage. Human industry has appropriated every thing;
fire, air, earth, every thing is subjected, every thing is tamed. The
very animals seem to submit themselves voluntarily to the service of
man. The horse himself, the English horse, so swift and powerful,
scarcely neighs with impatience, or capers with eagerness; his very
impetuosity is docile. The Englishman is in one sense the king of the
world. It is for him that every thing is in motion around him: yet he
himself is bound by unchangeable customs. He fears change. He has even a
religion of an established order. One would think nothing could be more
prosaic than a country thus laboured; yet, nevertheless, all Europe
resounds with the songs of her poets. Amid the miracles of industry, the
profusion of riches, the refinement of luxury; in the face of
steam-engines, suspension bridges, and railroads, imagination has lost
nothing of its ancient empire; on the contrary, during the last thirty
years, she has acquired more; she has been borne, as by an irresistible
influence, towards the description of natural objects and simple
sentiments. She has revelled in the charms of a poetry whose freshness
seemed to belong to another age. The fact is, if we regard England more
attentively, we shall discover her under a different aspect to what has
been usually ascribed to her; and shall be less astonished to find her
poetic in seeing her picturesque. That agriculture, so marvellous, is
far from having given up every thing to the useful; its object seems
rather to have been to embellish than to fertilize the earth. Those
fields so well tilled, are green and riant; those quiet streams flow
brimful through rich meadows; and, thanks to beautiful trees and living
hedges, the very plains are charming. Those seats where opulence parades
all its splendour, are environed by greensward pastured by abundant
cattle; and the art which designs those immense parks, seems to have no
object but to put into a frame a beautiful landscape. The taste is no
longer to dig lakes, to cast up mounts, to plant thickets; but to
inclose whole rivers, woods, and mountains. Everywhere you discover the
sentiment of the beauty of nature. You find it in every class. Neither
riches nor poverty have been able to extinguish it. We observe in other
countries that the sentiment is unknown to the peasantry. They are the
towns which they admire: to them the country is merely useful. But in
England everybody loves the country; even those who cultivate it. The
most humble cottage is a proof of it. The taste which rarely
distinguishes the architecture of the English towns, is reserved, I
think, for the country houses. The little gardens which lead to them;
the orchards which surround them; even the very bushes of jessamine or
of rose, which crown their porches or tapestry their walls, seem
designed to delight the eye. Amid the treasures of an admirable
vegetation--gothic ruins, the towers of an old manor, the arches of an
abbey, the ivy which clothes the walls of a parish church; the tree
scathed and decaying, which has no value but its age; all these things
are respected by every one as the monuments of the past, or the
ornaments of the country. The whole population interests itself in every
thing which adorns its abode; and this nation, the queen of commerce and
industry, seems to recollect with affection, that it is to the earth
that she owes her wealth, her glory, and her greatness.
“An analogous sentiment pervades the poetry of the English. The verses
of their good poets seem to have been composed in the open air; all
external objects are by them faithfully portrayed; the impressions they
produce are faithfully rendered. Simple sentiments, those of a domestic
nature, so well protected by a country life, in them preserve all their
force and all their purity. Their recitals are often the most touching
and familiar; when they turn upon great adventures, they are related as
they would be on a winter’s evening before the fire of an ancient
castle, or of a humble cottage. Scarcely an English poet is wanting in
descriptive talent, not even the least celebrated amongst them. It
shines with great _eclat_ in Burns, in Crabbe, in Walter Scott. Lord
Byron, who has so many others, possesses none perhaps in a greater
degree than this.”
It is to be hoped that the English poetry will always maintain this
character; will always remain the powerful ally of the love of the
country: one great means of preserving those features of English rural
life so delightfully described in the foregoing extract. Amid the
fascinations and temptations to a corruption of taste, from the mighty
wealth and political influence of this country, it is to the combined
effect of real, simple Christianity, the love of nature, and of that
literature which is in alliance with those great conservative powers,
that we must look for the maintenance of a sound national heart and
intellect; and consequently, of that great moral ascendency, and genuine
glory, that as a nation we have obtained. I long with a most earnest
longing, for our stability in this respect; for the preservation of
those pure, simple, holy tastes which have led our countrymen in all
ages, since reading and civilization came upon them, to delight in the
pleasant fields, in the pleasant country houses, in the profound peace
of noble woods, so favourable to high and solemn musings; and in all
those healthful and animating sports and pursuits that belong to such a
life. It has been through the influence of these tastes, and of these
home-born but exalted pleasures, by the strong human sympathies
engendered by living amongst our manly and high-minded peasantry--the
hardy sons and bold defenders of their natal soil,--the strong-hearted
old fathers,--the fair and modest daughters of uncorrupted England; by
living amongst them as their leaders, counsellors, and protectors; by
musing over the inspiring annals of the past days of England; on the
solid tomes of our legislators, our divines, philosophers and poets, in
the calm twilight of ancient halls, or in the sunny seats of their broad
bay-windows, looking out on fields purchased by the blood of patriots,
and hoary forests, that have witnessed the toils of their ancestors, or
perhaps received them to their dim bosoms in times of danger; it is by
such aliment that the British heart has been nourished, and grown to its
present greatness, when its pulsations are felt to the very ends of the
earth, and by millions of confiding or submissive men, whose destinies
depend upon its motions. Our arms may have been wielded in many a mighty
battle for the accomplishment of this magnificent end, but it was here
that the power of victory grew: our counsels may have, wearily, and
stroke by stroke, worked out this ample breadth of glory; but it is
here, and it was thus, that the wisdom, and the prudence, and the
irresistible fortitude sprung, increased, and gave to those brave men
and high measures their vigour and stability; here that they were born,
and fostered to their beneficent fulness.
Therefore would I have every thing which may tend to keep alive this
genuine spirit of England, may keep open all the sources of its strength
and its inspiration, encouraged: every taste for the sweet serenity, the
animating freshness, the preserving purity of country life, promoted;
every thing which can embellish or render it desirable. For this cause I
delight in the every-day spreading attachment to all branches of Natural
History; in the great encouragement given to all books on country
affairs; and in the advancing love of landscape-painting, by which the
most enchanting views of our mountains, coasts, wild lakes, forests, and
pastoral downs will be brought into our cities, and spread in sunshine
and in poetry along their walls. For this I am thankful, with a deep
thankfulness, for the mighty strains of poetry that have been poured out
in this age, brimmed and gushing over with the august spirit of nature:
for Wordsworth and Coleridge; Rogers and Campbell; for Shelley and Byron
and Keats, and for many another noble bard; for the Romances of Scott,
which have pre-eminently piled quenchless fuel on this social flame, by
sanctifying many of the most beautiful scenes in the kingdom with the
highest historical remembrances; and not less, for that wonderful series
of articles by Wilson, in Blackwood’s Magazine,--in their kind, as truly
amazing, and as truly glorious, as the romances of Scott, or the poetry
of Wordsworth. Far and wide and much as these papers have been admired,
wherever the English language is read, I still question whether any one
man has a just idea of them as a whole. Whatever may be our opinion of
the side which this powerful journal has taken in politics, it must be
admitted that while it has fought the battles of Toryism with vigour, it
has fought them in a noble spirit. There was a day when a foul
influence had crept into it; when it was personal, rancorous, and apt
to descend to language and details below the dignity of its strength;
but that day is gone by, and it has been seen with lively satisfaction
by all parties that it has purged itself of this evil nature, and as it
has become peerless in fame,--it has become more and more generous,
forgiving, and superior to every petty nature and narrow feeling. Its
politics are ultra, but they are full of intellect; and they who desire
to see what _can_ be said on the Tory side, see it there. But the great
attraction to literary men has long been, that splendid series of ample,
diffuse, yet overflowing papers, in which every thing relating to poetry
and nature find a place. These are singly, and in themselves, specimens
of transcendent power; but taken altogether, as a series, are, in the
sure unity of one great and correct spirit, such a treasury of criticism
as is without a parallel in the annals of literature. For, while they
are full of the soundest opinions, because they are the offspring of a
deeply poetical mind--a mind strong in the guiding instincts of nature;
they are preserved from the dryness and technicality of ordinary
criticism by this very poetic temperament. They come upon you like some
abounding torrent, streaming on, amid the wildest and noblest scenes;
amid mountains and forests and flowery meadows; and bringing to your
senses, at once, all their freshness of odours, dews, and living sounds.
They are the gorgeous outpourings of a wild, erratic eloquence, that, in
its magnificent rush, throws out the most startling, and apparently
conflicting dogmas, yet all bound together by a strong bond of sound
sense and incorruptible feeling.
They are all poetry:--sometimes, in its weakest and most diluted form;
again, gushing into the most melting pathos; and then again playing and
frolicking like a happy boy, half beside himself with holiday freedom
and sunshine; then vapouring, and rhodomontading, and reeling along in
the very drunkenness of a luxuriant fancy, intoxicated at the
ambrosia-fountains of the heart; and then, like a strong man, all at
once recovering his power and self-possession--if self-possession that
can be called, which, in the next moment, gives way to a new impulse,
and soars up into the highest regions of eloquence, pouring forth the
noblest sentiments and most fervid imaginations, as from an oracle of
quenchless inspiration.
It is in this manner, and this spirit, that the writer has--reviewed
shall I say? no, not reviewed, but proclaimed, trumpeted to the farthest
regions, idealized, etherealized, and made almost more glorious than
they are in their own solemn grandeur, the poems of Wordsworth, of
Milton, of Shakspeare, of Spenser, of Homer, and of many another genuine
bard. And it is thus that he has led you over the heathy mountains and
along the fairy glens of the north, to many a sweet secluded loch, into
many a Highland hut. It is thus that he loves to make you observe the
noble peasant striding along in his prime of youth--in his sedate
manhood--in his hoary age, more beautiful than youth, for then he is
crowned with the wisdom of his simple experience of the trials and
vanity of life, and of the feeling that he draws near to eternity. It is
thus that he bids you stand, and mark the fair young maiden busied about
the door of her parental hut, more graceful and happy in the engrossment
of her simple duties, beneath the sun and the blue heavens, than the
very daughter of the palace in the lap of her artificial enchantments.
It is thus he shews you the young mother tossing her laughing infant in
the open air, while her two elder children are rolling on the sunny
sward, or scrambling up the heathy brae; and her mother sits silently by
the door, in the basking tranquillity of age. It is thus that he fills
you with the noblest sympathies, with the purest human feelings; and
then astonishes you with some sudden feat of leaping, running, or
wrestling; and as suddenly is gone with rod in hand, following the
course of a clear rapid stream, eagerly intent upon trout or salmon. And
then he is the poet again, every atom of him, meek as a bard of
nineteen, or of ninety; all tenderness, purity, and holiness; the poet
of the City of the Plague, or of the Children’s Dance, forcing you to
forget that he ever swaggered in an article, or rollocked in a Noctes.
He is now basking in the shine of a May-day, amid the sparkling dews,
the waving flowers, the running waters, and all the delights of earth,
air, and the blue o’erspanning sky.
These are papers that have already done infinite service to the cause of
poetry and nature; and therefore do I rejoice in their existence, and
addition to all that sublime accumulation of fervid poetry and prose in
the praise and love of the country, with which our English literature,
above all others, is enriched.
But there is one person to whom I must still give a separate mention; an
individual to whom we owe a signal increase of country delight,--Thomas
Bewick. Every painter of landscape is a friend to the best feelings and
tastes of humanity; but Bewick has, in a manner, created a new art. He
has struck out a peculiar mode of embellishing books with snatches of
rural scenery, that will, if pursued in the true spirit, do more to
diffuse a love of the country than all other modes of engraving put
together. To see what may be done, let us only see what he has done.
Through his revival of the art of wood-cutting, we have now hundreds of
wood-engravers, and thousands of wood-embellished books: yet lay your
hands on any one of these volumes, and, with all deference to the great
talent evinced, the great beauty produced,--till you open Bewick you
shall not know what wood-cutting is capable of doing for books on the
country.
I have heard some wood-engravers speak with contempt of Bewick, and
say--“Why he was very well for his time of day, but we have scores that
can excel him now.” To such men I have only one reply--“you don’t
understand the country. I grant you there are many who can produce a
more showy print; but it was not show which Bewick aimed at,--it was
truth: and if you will know which is most excellent, take the one and
the other; and let them be both opened before some country family of
taste, and you will see that your print will dazzle the eye for a
moment; it will be a moment of surprise and delight; but when the moment
is past, the eye will fall on Bewick, and there it will be riveted; and
there, the longer it dwells the stronger will be its fascination, and it
will be the beginning of an everlasting love.” And why is this? Simply
because we have in one, splendour of style; in the other, Nature! pure,
faithful, and picturesque Nature,--Nature in her most felicitous, or
most solemn moments. I have heard those who loved the country, and loved
it because they knew it, say, that the opening of Bewick was a new era
in their lives. I have seen how his volumes are loved, and treasured,
and reverted to, time after time, in many a country house; the more
familiar, the more prized; the oftener seen, the oftener desired.
And why should it not be so? It is not so much as a triumph of art, as a
triumph of genius, that they are love-worthy. Yet as specimens of art
they have eminent merit. See, in what a small space he gives you a whole
landscape--a whole wide heath, or stormy coast, with their appropriate
objects. See, with a single line, a single touch, what a world of effect
he has achieved! But it is the spirit of the conception, and the sacred
fidelity to Nature, which stamp their value upon his works. They are the
works of an eye which sees in a moment what in a scene advances beyond
common-place; what in it has a story, a moral, a sarcasm, or touch of
transcendent beauty. They are the works of a heart bound by a bond of
indissoluble love to the sweetness and peace of nature; rich in
recollections of all her forms and hues; and of a spirit which cherished
no ambition, no hope on earth, superior to that of throwing into his
transcriptions the express image of his beloved Nature.
This is the great secret of the delight in his wood-cuts. They are full
of all those beauties, those fine yet impressive beauties, that arrest
the gaze of the lovers of nature; and they are so faithful that they
never deceive, or disappoint the experienced eye. The vignettes of his
Natural History are in themselves a series of stories so clearly told
that they require no explanation, and are full of the most varied human
interest. He delights in the picturesque and beautiful in nature, and
the grotesque in life. Whatever he introduces, its genuine
characteristics are all about it; beast or bird, there it is in the very
scenery, and amid the very concomitants that you see it surrounded by in
nature. You miss nothing that you find in the same situation in the real
scene and circumstance; and, what is of more consequence, you never see
a single thing introduced which has no business there. He is the very
Burns of wood-engraving. He has the same intense love of nature; his
bold freedom of spirit; his flashes of indignant feeling; his love of
satire; and his ridicule of human vanity and cant. In his landscapes, he
gives you every thing the most poetical:--wide, wild moors; the
desolation of winter; the falling fane, and the crumbling tower; wild
scenes on northern shores, with their rocks and sea-fowl, their wrecks
and tempests. In his village scenes you have every feature of village
life given with a precision and a spirit equally admirable. He delights
to seize hold on humanity even in some of its degradations, as
drunkenness and gluttony, and Hogarth-like, to excite your disgust
against the abuse of God’s good things and man’s high nature. He
delights equally to exhibit those ragged rapscallions that abound in the
streets of towns, and the purlieus of villages; uncultivated, neglected,
and therefore graceless, reckless--vulgarity and wickedness stamped on
their features, and even in their strong, close-cut, thick-set heads of
hair; full of mischief and cruelty from top to toe. There you have them,
just in the commission of those barbarities or depredations that speak
volumes for the necessity of better popular education: and as for
beggars, strollers with bear and monkey, lame soldiers, and all the
groups of tatterdemalions that are scattered all over this country,
there is no end of them. At times he is full of whim; at others half in
jest, and half in solemn earnest. Again, he touches you with pity for
the aged and forlorn; and often rises into a tone of deep moral warning,
and into actual demonstrations of the sublime and beautiful.
The elements in their majesty are made to laugh to scorn the inflated
vanity of man. A stately church has sometime been reared on a pleasant
and commanding mount near the sea. You are made to call to mind the
pride and the gratulation in which it was erected in the palmy days of
the Catholic faith. You see it in its newness, with all its fair
proportions and noble completeness--a beautiful temple to the Christian
Deity. You see how the country people come in awe and wonder to behold
it; into what a silence of veneration they drop as they approach; with
what a prostration of astonishment of heart they enter, while the new
and merry bells sound above their heads; and all abroad the glad
sunshine of summer is pouring, and casts its light into the glorious
interior; and the sea-breeze comes fluttering with a full delight; and
every thing seems to speak of triumph, stability, and enduring joy. You
know with what solemn pomp the prelate, in full canonicals, and followed
by his train of clerical brethren in their becoming robes, and
surrounded by the powerful and the beautiful of the neighbourhood,
proceeds to perform the rites of consecration. And with what pride the
great family, who have given the land to God, and expended the revenues
of ample estates for many years in erecting this goodly fabric, see all,
hear all, and find hard work to conceal the inward swell of gratified
ambition. How they look on all the accomplished miracle of the place;
the lofty, arched roof above; the stately columns along the aisles; the
priest in his pulpit; the people in their seats. With what proud
gratulation they hear the voices of the choristers break forth, and fill
“this house which they have built.” With what a high, elating,
intoxicating feeling, with what a proud joy they kneel down on the
silken cushions, and open the golden clasps of their richly-painted
missals! All this we see; and then the dream of strength and glory and
endurance is gone;--is gone from them and you. There stands the ancient
church! Ancient? Yes, it is now ancient. All that dream of delight, all
that throng of wondering people, have long passed away. Yes! the very
founders, whose hearts beat in pride, are now dust and ashes beneath
your feet;--ay, and their children and children’s children to the sixth
or seventh generation. That noble fabric, then so fair of hue; so
admirable in its workmanship; so sharp in all its mouldings, and
delicate in its tracery; that temple in which so many prayers were put
up for the mariner tossed on that wilderness of mighty waters on which
it looked--is a ruin! The winds and the tempests of ages have blown and
beaten upon it. The ocean has come in fury, and rent away its western
front, that so gloriously used to fling back the splendours of the
setting sun; and the very mound of the dead is rifled by the billows.
What is that which I read upon a fallen stone, over which the waves, at
every returning tide, wash with insulting strength? “This stone is
erected to perpetuate the memory of ----.” O pride! O vanity and
swelling confidence of “man that is a worm”--what a rebuke! But what is
this? Another stone fallen--and fallen yet lower;--“Custos Rotulorum, of
the County of ----.” And have time and tide not spared even this great
man? Is the very keeper of the Rolls gone, and his monument after him?
Where then is human stability? The waves, and that ransacked monument,
and that stately ruin of a church, all say, not on earth; not in the
works of man. The very house which he had raised, the very ground which
he had consecrated, are pulled down by the elements; and even the bones
of himself and children are swept into the great deep. I do not know, in
the catalogue of the paintings with which this country is enriched, one
that speaks with a more sublime power to the imagination than this
wood-cut of the littleness of human pride; and of the only sure hope of
honour and endurance, in the eternity of virtue.
There is another sketch of a similar class, but of an opposite
inculcation. While that strikes at the vaunting spirit of human pride,
this speaks a sad consolation to the struggling and miserable. It is a
moonlight view of a solitary burial-ground. It is like one of those in
Scotland, distant from the place of worship; perhaps on a lonely heath.
There is not a building in view to give the least feeling of proximity
to human life. It is still--far off--and alone. The moon pours a
melancholy light on the wild, grassy turf, and the foliage that
overhangs the enclosing wall; and here and there, stoop the heavy
headstones of the dead. On one in the foreground is inscribed--“GOOD
TIMES, BAD TIMES, AND ALL TIMES GET OVER.”
His churchyard scenes, indeed, are all full of the most beautiful and
truly human sentiment. In one, you have an old man reading a
headstone,--“VANITAS, VANITATUM, OMNIA VANITAS.” It is a sentiment which
strikes down to the bottom of his soul, as a voice of warning from
heaven, and the voice of memory from the days of his past life. The old
man stands propt on his staff, and you cannot misinterpret the thoughts
which throng upon him. He is carried back through all his days; his days
of boyhood and buoyant youth; his days of manly ardour and triumph; his
days of trial and decay--to the very hour in which he stands here. The
wife of his youth lies in the dust at his feet; his very children are
all gone before him, or remain to neglect him; his friends have dropped
away, one after another; he alone is left, a shattered remnant of other
and happier times: left in a noisy and a crowded world. Truly it
is--“vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
But see, here comes a boy driving his hoop. He bounds over the very
ground, past the very stone which has conjured up in the old man’s heart
such a host of sad thoughts. But none of them come to him. To him all is
new; the world is fair; the present is Paradise. He scarcely looks
around him, and yet he enjoys all nature. The sunshine plays upon his
head; the air visits his cheek; the earth is green beneath him. He
thinks not of the dead under his feet; of the awful stones around him.
He does not even see the old man himself,--a more striking memorial of
mortality and the vanity of life than all the rest. This is true human
life: age, sad and observant of every solemn memento; youth, in the
reckless happiness of its own charmed existence.
There is but a slight step, and hardly that, from his satire to his
humour, for one commonly partakes of the other, and in no instance are
these mingled qualities more happily shewn than in the cut now engraved,
for the first time, and placed at the head of this chapter. But in
humorous incidents he abounds. Here is a good woman hanging out her
clothes. A gipsy-like beggar-woman, with a child at her back, is going
out of the garden, and in true beggar recklessness leaves the gate open.
While the unconscious dame is busy at her line, in come the hens. One of
them is already strutting across her clean white linen, that lies on the
grass-plot, and leaving conspicuous marks of her dirty feet; and in are
marching a whole drove of young pigs, with the old sow at their heels.
In another place is seen the snug garden of some curious florist, with
auriculas blooming in pots, and some choice plant under a large glass;
and here too a mischievous sow has conducted her brood; and some of them
have made their way through the paling, and are in full career towards
the auriculas. Another moment, and glass, flowers, all will be one piece
of destruction. The old sow, shut out by her bulk, and a yoke upon her
neck, the token of her propensities, stands watching from beneath her
huge slouch ears, with the utmost satisfaction, this scene of
devastation.
Here again, is a country lad mounted on a shaggy pony, and doubtless
sent on some important errand; but a flight of birds has captivated his
attention, and so engaged is he in watching, that the pony has wandered
out of the way, and has reached the precipitous brink of a river. The
lad still gazing after the birds, finding the pony halt, bangs him with
his cudgel; the pony hangs back, and the little dog behind with uplifted
foot wonders what the lad can mean. There are two men fetching a tub of
water from a water-cask, but they are so lost in gossip, that the water
is running all away. A countryman to avoid paying toll at a bridge, is
fording the river below, holding the tail of his cow. But his hat is
blown off, and he dare not let go his hold to save it. He will get a
good wetting, and suffer greater loss than the toll; while the tollman
and a traveller on the bridge witness and enjoy his dilemma. Another
countryman is crossing a river in a style grotesque enough. The old man
is wading; on his back is his wife, on her’s a child, and on her head a
loaded basket. If the old man’s foot slip, what a catastrophe! In one
place is an old dame going to the village spring, and finding a whole
flock of geese frolicking in it. Her looks of execration and her
uplifted stick are infinitely amusing. In another, is an old dame about
to mount a stile, and a tremendous bull presenting himself on the other
side. Notwithstanding the bold bearing and protruded cudgel of the old
dame, one knows not whether it be most dangerous to fight or flee. And
here is the string of a kite caught on the hat of a countryman crossing
a stream on horseback. It would be difficult to decide whether the
distress of the man or that of the boys is the greater. On goes the
horse, and the rider tries in vain to get rid of the string. His fate is
to be pulled backward off the horse, or that of the boys to be dragged
into the stream, or to lose their kite.
There is another class of vignettes, in which cruelty to animals is held
up to abhorrence. There is the man with his cart, striking his horse on
the head with a bludgeon; his hat has fallen off in his passion. Ragged
lads are belabouring an ass with a gorse bush. A hardened lad has a cat
and dog harnessed to a little cart in which is a child; the cat is
nearly terrified to death at the dog, the child is crying amain; and the
lad is trying to force the whole team into the water. In most of these
cuts a gallows is seen in the distance, as the probable goal of the
career.
Another class is that of country accidents, full of appropriate spirit;
men crossing streams by means of the long boughs of trees, which are
breaking and letting them fall. A blind man led by his dog, crossing a
narrow foot-bridge, where the hand-rail is broken down, and his hat is
blown away by the wind. Old people caught in storms on wide, open
heaths; old, weary people far away from any town, as indicated by a
milestone marked XI. miles on one side, and XV. on the other. But they
are endless, and of endless variety. There are some, as I have said,
truly sublime. A shipwrecked man on a rock in mid-ocean praying; the
waves leaping and thundering around him; no single vessel in view, his
only hope in God. The hull of a vessel lying stranded on a solitary
coast. It is evident that it has been there for years; for its ribbed
timbers are laid bare, and it speaks both of human catastrophe, and
solitude, and decay. A fine contrast,--a circle of men on a village
green witnessing a fight, all vulgar eagerness and tumultuous passion;
the rainbow, that circle of heaven, spanning the sky beyond them in such
pure beauty--in the profound calm and holiness of nature.
Through all these representations, the spirit of the picturesque is
poured without measure. Such winter scenes! such summer scenes! all the
occupations and figures of rustic existence; fishermen, hunters,
shooters, ploughmen, all in their peculiar scenery and costume. There
are anglers in such delicious places, by such clear, rapid, winding
waters, with such overhanging rocks and foliage, that one longs
instantaneously to be an angler. We have all the spirit of Izaak
Walton’s book, in two square inches of wood-engraving: his descriptions
of natural beauty, his deep feeling of country enjoyment, and his single
and thankful contentment in his art. There are men and boys sleeping on
sunny grass, or beneath the shade of summer trees! O! so luxuriously,
that we long to be sleeping there too. There are such wild sea-shores,
and caverned rocks, with boys climbing up to get at the sea-fowls’ eggs,
and such stormy waters, that we are wild with desire to wander by those
rocks and waves. The sedgy water-sides, such as are found on moors where
the wild ducks and snipes and herons haunt, are inimitable. Nature is
everywhere so gloriously, yet so unostentatiously portrayed, as none but
the most ardent and devoted of her lovers can portray her. There is
nothing gaudy, shewy, or ambitious; she is most simple, and therefore
most beautiful.
CHAPTER III.
THE PRESENT STATE OF WOOD-ENGRAVING AS IT REGARDS RURAL SUBJECTS.
Unmeaning glitter, unprecedented softness, unprincipled novelty, shall
sometimes set aside for awhile the truth and simplicity of nature, and
the approbation of ages.--_Life of Ryland._
From what has been said in the last chapter, it is obvious that had
Bewick been but one of a series of wood-engravers during the established
period of the art, his merit would have been eminent and peculiar; but
when it is recollected that, at one stride, he brought it to comparative
perfection, our obligations to him are wonderfully increased.
The direct consequence of his revival of the art is, that we have now
tens of thousands of volumes embellished with wood-cuts, and upwards of
two hundred engravers in this department. The Penny Magazine alone is
said to pay for its wood-cutting 2000_l._ per annum. This magazine and
some of its cheap cotemporaries have made a peculiar application of this
art, which is, in itself, a great national blessing. By stereotyping
wood-engravings, they are enabled to strike off any number of copies of
them with their letter-press, and by this means, prints of a large size,
and of great strength of effect, are made to circulate amongst the
people, even to an extent to which the only limits must be those of
education. Thus are many pictorial subjects placed before the eyes of
tens of thousands who could otherwise never have seen them. Subjects
from the paintings of the old masters; landscapes from every country on
the globe, with their peculiar characteristics; prints of ancient and
modern buildings; of ancient and modern sculpture; of animals, plants;
in fact, every subject of natural or human history, all brought livingly
to the sight, and at such an amazingly trivial expense, that the desire
of knowledge is, at once, quickened and gratified in a degree of which
our fathers had not the most distant idea; nor of the effect of which
have we, perhaps, any adequate conception. We feel, however, that it
must be full of virtue and happiness. Throughout thousands and tens of
thousands of cottages shall the eyes which, without these blessed
facilities, would never have glanced on anything beyond the objects
surrounding their daily life, now gaze in living delight on the
magnificent scenes, the beautiful productions of every land and climate;
on the stern or fantastic splendour of foreign towns and cities, domes
and minarets; on the forms and costumes, the dwellings and implements of
the most distant nations; on the animal natures of air, earth, and
ocean; on the faces of men who have been the lights, or terrors of the
world; of those who have fought for, and thought for, sung for, and died
for man and his cause; the spread of knowledge and religion; in fact,
for that social and illimitable happiness of which these things are the
precursors; a happiness that shall be brought to every house, in city or
in desert, to every fireside, however humble.
This is a great and beneficent result, from the union of two noble arts:
for whatever tends to embellish human life; to give to toiling men a
refining pleasure; to bring them from base excitements and public haunts
to the pure and peaceful enjoyments of home; to draw them to their own
ingles; to induce them to sit among their children, and delight their
eyes with objects of beauty, and feed their growing spirits with those
natural facts, in which the wisdom and goodness of God are made so
sensible to young minds; whatever does this, does the work of love; the
work of human happiness and national greatness. To enlighten the general
mass, and at the same time to kindle the noblest feelings of the soul of
man, are the sure means to build up the state with true citizens; to
protect the people from despotism, and government from popular caprice.
This, I say, is one great result; yet even this does not seem to me the
highest legitimate province of the art. It is obvious that prints of the
kind described--of buildings, portraits, or historic scenes, must after
all come from metal with greater perfection than from wood. To most
subjects metal gives a richness and delicacy that wood can never equal.
Wood can give great strength and boldness, but accompanied nevertheless
with something of hardness and constraint. It is only the power of
striking off prints with the letter-press which gives wood that
admirable advantage over metal of which I have been speaking. It
becomes, in that case, a substitute for metal, where metal could not be
used without defeating the ultimate object by its expense. There it is
merely a good substitute for metal. But there is one department in which
it is superior even to metal; and that is in such vignette
representations of rural life and scenery as Bewick has used it in. Here
it triumphs over metal; for it does not here require so much brilliance,
or richness, or extreme delicacy, as a certain homely beauty belonging
to rustic objects. The beauty of nature does not consist in showiness
and dazzling lustre, so much as in pleasing colours, a simple grace of
form, and a certain roughness and opacity of surface, on which the eye
can rest longer without fatigue than on more polished substances. Now it
is in these qualities that Bewick’s engravings abound. He is sacredly
faithful to Nature. He catches at once the spirit of the country and of
its wild denizens. He is simple, beautiful, but not glaring;--Nature is
never so.
Yet amongst all our wood-engravers,--and many of them are continually
employed on rural subjects,--it is as true as it may seem astonishing,
that there is not one of them who can bear a moment’s comparison with
Bewick as a delineator of rural life. This is owing to no deficiency of
talent--we have many artists of the highest talent--it is owing to other
causes. If it seem surprising that no one, from the time of Bewick’s
restoration of the art to the present moment, should have equalled him
in the representation of nature, it is not more surprising than that
from the time of Milton to that of Cowper no one wrote good blank verse;
that with Milton’s free and natural majesty as a model before them, we
should have had nothing better than the stilted stiffness of Akenside,
and the pompous inflations and ungrammatical distortions of Thomson. The
same causes in both cases have produced the same effect. Our artists,
like the poets, have forsaken nature herself, to study and imitate one
another. While our artists are employed to depict nature, they are
living in our mighty capital, cut off from the very face of nature. They
have full employ; for the eyes of those for whom they labour are not
more familiar with the country than their own. Dash and meretricious
show captivate the multitude, and therefore dash and show are given in
abundance; the wondering lover of nature looks for her in vain. The
ambitious and frippery taste of the age is stamped on all the most
excellent productions of what should be the rustic burin. We now and
then see a better spirit; things overflowing with talent; and on the
very verge of nature. Such are some of the beautiful recent
illustrations of Gray’s Elegy, Chevy-Chace, Aiken’s Calendar of the
Year, Knight’s Pictorial Shakspeare, the bold sketches in Hone’s
Table-Book, and the elegant ones in some of their books for the young
published by Darton and Clark, Tegg, and others: but, in general, our
most skilful artists are not contented with the simplicity of nature;
they want better bread than can be made of wheat. Hence while they are
admired in cities, Bewick reigns sole and triumphant all through the
country.
But how is this to be remedied? As I have said, we have talent
and manual skill equal to any thing; what we want are purer
designs,--designs, in fact, from Nature! We want subjects drawn from the
same source that Bewick drew them. I do not mean that our artists should
imitate Bewick; no, that they should imitate Nature,--the true, the
beautiful, the unambitious. Had Bewick lived a thousand years, he would
every day have seen some new subject, some new features, in the
everlasting changes and combinations that surround the fixed spirit of
the universe. We have pupils of his--Harvey and Nesbit in particular,
and why do not they, with their high talent, produce the same genuine
nature? The answer is obvious. They are citizens. They have abandoned
the daily cognizance of Nature; they have taken a directly opposite
course to Bewick. He was an inseparable companion of Nature from his
boyhood. All his life long he was watching after, and pursuing her into
her most hidden retirements. To him
High mountains were a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture.
He had tried the life of London, but he could not bear it. His soul was
robbed of its nourishment. He was shut up, blinded, famished in that
huge wilderness of stone; dinned by that eternal chaos of confused
sounds. He gasped for the free air; he pined for the dews; for the
solemn roar of the ocean; for the glories of rising and setting suns.
His father when he sent him from his country home at Cherryburn, to be
apprenticed to Mr. Bielby at Newcastle, said to him at parting--“Now
Thomas, thou art going to lead a different life to what thou hast led
here: thou art going from constant fresh air and activity, to the
closeness of a town and a sedentary occupation: thou must be up in a
morning, and get a run.” And Thomas followed faithfully, for it chimed
exactly with his own bent, his father’s injunction. Every morning, rain
or shine, often without his hat, and his bushy head of black hair
ruffling in the wind, he would be seen scampering up the street towards
the country; and the opposite neighbours would cry--“There goes Bielby’s
fond boy.” These morning excursions he kept up during his life; and they
did not suffice him. After the expiration of his apprenticeship, he
roamed far and wide through the glorious and soul-embuing scenery of
Scotland. Year after year, and day after day, it was his delight to
stroll over heaths and moors, by sedgy pools and running waters. He saw
bird, beast, and fish, from his hidden places, in all the freedom of
their wild life. He saw the angler casting his line; the fowler setting
his net and his springes; the farmer’s boy amusing his solitude, when
He strolled, the lonely Crusoe of the fields--
prowling after water-fowl amid the reedy haunts; watching the flight of
birds with greedy eyes; lighting fires under the screening hedge, and
collecting sticks for fuel, and blowing them on hands and knees into a
flame. Such were his loves, his studies, his perpetual occupations; and
to have similar results, we must have persons of a similar passion and
pursuit. We must have designers; for we have plenty of manual
dexterity, capable of executing any design to the minutest shade,--we
must have designers in whom Nature is, at once, an appetite, a perpetual
study, and quenchless delight. Landscape painters we have of this
character. Turner, with his gorgeous creations; Copley Fielding, with
his heaths and downs, in which miles of space are put upon a few feet of
canvass, and that soul of solitude poured upon you in a gallery, which
you before encountered only in the heart of living nature; Collins, with
his exquisite sea-sides and rustic pieces; Hunt, with his really rustic
characters; Barrett, with his sunsets; Stanfield, Cattermole, and
others. We want a designer of wood-cuts of a similar character. What
scenes of peerless beauty and infinite variety might an individual give
us, who would devote himself, heart and soul, to this object; who would
ramble all through the varied and beautiful scenery of these glorious
islands at successive intervals; who would pedestrianize in simple
style; who would stroll along our wild shores; amongst our magnificent
hills; prowl in fens and forests with fowlers and keepers; and seek
refreshment by the fireside of the wayside inn; and take up his
temporary abode in obscure and old-fashioned villages. Such a man might
send into our metropolis, and thence, through the aid of the engravers,
to every part of the kingdom, such snatches of natural loveliness, such
portions of rural scenery and rural life, as should make themselves felt
to be the genuine product of nature--for nature will be felt, and kindle
a purer taste and a stronger affection for the country.
I am not insensible to all the difficulties which lie in the way of such
a devotion; nor that such a scheme will be pronounced chimerical by
those who, at a far slighter cost, can please a less informed taste: but
till we have such a man, we shall not have a second Bewick; and till
such a mode of study is, more or less, adopted, we shall never have that
love of the genuine country gratified, which assuredly and extensively
exists.
Since writing the foregoing remarks, it is with great pleasure that I
have seen the arts of designing and wood-engraving beginning to separate
themselves, and that of designing for the wood-engravers taking its
place as a distinct profession.[15] Harvey, Browne, Sargent, Lambert,
Gilbert, and Melville, have for some time been designers of this
description. This important step has only to be followed up by designers
in the manner pointed out in this chapter, to insure that complete
return to nature which is so much to be desired, and where such an
exhaustless field of beauty and life awaits the observant artist, as
would place the present pre-eminent manual skill of our wood-engravers
in its true and well-merited position.
[15] The London and Westminster Review, August, 1838, in an article on
wood-engraving, very judiciously suggested that it was an art well
calculated for the pursuit of ladies, and one which they might convert
not only into a source of profit to themselves, but of public
advantage. No doubt of it. It is an art simple and of easy
acquisition. But why not ladies who are good sketchers become
designers for wood-cuts at once? They have all the requisite
qualifications already in their hands; and what fresh and original
treasures of taste and fancy are now slumbering, lost to the world,
which they might embellish, in the minds and portfolios of ladies. So
vastly is the demand for wood-engravings every day growing, that
nothing is more difficult than to obtain designs, or when obtained to
get them cut. Ladies, therefore, who have a genius for design, would
soon find their value amongst the publishers; and while the profession
of a designer is both elegant and feminine, how much more independent,
and much less laborious, it would be than needlework, or the duties
and position of a governess.
PART V.
THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND.
Amongst the most interesting features of the country are our forests.
There is nothing that we come in contact with, which conveys to our
minds such vivid impressions of the progression of England in power and
population; which presents such startling contrasts between the present
and the past. We look back into the England which an old forest brings
to our mind, and see a country one wild expanse of woodlands, heaths,
and mosses. Here and there a little simple town sending up
Its fleecy smoke amongst the forest boughs.
From age to age no tumult did arouse
Its peaceful dwellers; there they lived and died,
Passing a dreamy life, diversified
By nought of novelty, save, now and then,
A horn, resounding through the neighbouring glen,
Woke them as from a trance, and led them out
To catch a brief glimpse of the hunt’s wild route;
The music of the hounds; the tramp and rush
Of steeds and men;--and then a sudden hush
Left round the eager listeners;--the deep mood
Of awful, dead, and twilight solitude,
Fallen again upon that forest vast.
We see in the distance the stately castle of the feudal lord; we hear
the bell of the convent from the neighbouring dale. There are solitary
hamlets and scattered cottages, with mud walls and thatched roofs,
peeping from the ocean of umbrageous tree-tops, and little patches of
cultivation. Born thralls are tilling the lands of the thane, or
watching his flocks and herds, to defend them from the wolves and bears;
foresters are going their rounds beneath hoary oaks, on the watch for
trespassers on venison and vert. We meet with the pilgrim with his
scallop shell, and sandal shoon; we come suddenly on the solitude of the
hermit, where some spring bubbles from the forest turf, or scatters its
waters down the fern-hung rocks. Perhaps the noble and his train sweep
past in pursuit of the stag or boar; perhaps the outlaw and his train in
the same pursuit, and setting at defiance, amid vast woods and tracks
familiar to himself, all the keen officers, and bloody statutes of
forest law.
It is a pleasure but to hear
The bridles ringing sharp and clear
Amid the forest green;
To hear the rattle of the sheaves,
And coursers rustling in the leaves.
With merry blasts between.
_Stewart Rose’s Red King._
Perhaps there is the sound of martial alarm--the clash of sudden onset
in the forest glade. The dwellings of the vassals surrounding the lord’s
castle are in flames, fired by the band of some hostile noble. Such is
the England into which an old forest carries our imagination;--partially
peopled with feudal barons and unlettered serfs; without commerce
abroad; without union within; brave, yet demi-savage; aspiring, but
violent; pious, yet sanguinary in all its penal enactments. When we step
out of memory and imagination into the cheerful daylight and conscious
present, what an England now! All those forests, with three or four
exceptions, are gone!--their names alone left in the land by the
powerful impressions of time and custom. One wide expanse of
cultivation;--the garden of the world;--swarming towns, splendid cities,
busy and populous hamlets appearing everywhere, and fenced fields
interscattered with patrician dwellings; not crowned with towers, lit by
mere loop-holes, defended with bastioned gateways, portcullises, and
drawbridges, and moats; but standing with open aspects of peaceful
beauty, amid fair gardens and fair lawns, undefended by feudal ramparts,
because a thousand times more strongly fortified by the security of
enlightened laws. We see a swarming people, free, and full of
knowledge, even to its hinds and mechanics, in possession of the highest
arts of life; the hills and dales covered with their harvests and their
cattle;--the seas round the whole globe with their ships;--a people, at
once the most powerful and the most civilized on the earth.
Those old feudal towers are, for the most part, crumbling into ruin, the
wasting vestiges of a barbarous system, or embellished and adapted to
the spirit of the present times. Those abbeys and convents, standing in
similar ruins, or exhibiting still more marvellous change,--the altars
pulled down, the chantries silenced, and the professors of a sacred
celibacy driven out, and replaced by men of the world, with their wives
and families;--no longer places of worship, but places of domestic
abode. Those two mighty powers, Feudalism and Popery--gone for ever!
Here is an astounding change. A stupendous march has been going on from
that time to this; and one from which, is there a man, however much he
may murmur at the present times, who would be willing to recede a single
step? Would the noble be willing to give up the delights of London for a
feudal castle surrounded by wild woods and wastes, a troop of rude
retainers, and no resources but the year’s round of hunting, or of party
feuds--not of tongues in Westminster, but of swords and firebrands in
the forests? Would he acquiesce in this, when the country can scarcely
keep him a few months, though he can assemble round him kindred spirits,
books, the elegancies and mind of social life, and the speediest news of
the whole world? Would the country gentleman like to sink into a feudal
retainer? The merchant follow his procession of packhorses through
narrow roads, and in high peril of bandits? The farmer drop down into
the born thrall? The parish priest convert his pleasant parsonage and
family into the solitary bachelorship of popery? Would the man most
pressed by the cares and heart-griping necessities of this populous and
struggling time, be willing to accept the quiet simplicity of those
days, with their monotonous solitude, ignorance, servitude, and
perpetual danger of arbitrary infliction of death or mutilation?
And yet, in what colours of the rose do our imaginations clothe these
times! The repose, the simplicity, the picturesque solitude, come before
us with a peculiar feeling of delight. And so, no doubt, there was a
wild charm about them. The old minstrels delighted to sing about them,
and they did it with a feeling of nature. The green shaws, the merry
green woods, especially when “the leaves were lark and long” in summer;
when
The wood wele sang and would not cease,
Sitting upon the spray;
the exploits of the outlaw; the hymn of the lonely anchorite; the
vesper-bell of the convent; and the chivalrous adventures of knights and
dames in forests and hoary holts, fired them with a genuine enthusiasm,
and communicate their warmth to us. No doubt, too, that baron and
esquire, forester and lawless pursuer of the deer, had all a wild
delight in their life; and instinctively closing the eyes of our mind
upon what was dark and unpalatable in their practice, we open them to
all that was free, peaceful, and in contrast with our own situation and
mode of existence. We rush from cities and social anxieties into the
free world of woods and wildernesses, with hearts that feel the cool
refreshments of nature. To us it is a novelty, with all its piquancy
about it; and we cannot bide long enough to wear off the charm. We come,
too, with the high poetry of a thousand intellectual associations to
take possession of woodland freedom. We have all the power of Milton,
Shakspeare, Spenser, and Ariosto, upon us; and how delicious seems the
picturesque England of the feudal ages! We have, indeed, now too little
of what they had too much. They, like the modern Americans, would gladly
have exchanged some of their trees for cultivated lands; they had too
much of a good thing; in popular phraseology, they could not see the
wood for trees; but O! how delightful are those tree-lands to us,
prisoners of civilization, and walkers amongst brick-walls.
Let us wander awhile now amongst those fresh woodlands. Our old
chroniclers tell us, that this kingdom was once nearly overspread with
forests; that they existed from time immemorial; that is, long before
the Norman dynasty commenced, by which they were more perfectly defined,
carefully fenced, and protected with sanguinary laws. They were that
part of the country, and indeed, the greater part, which retained its
original state. That which remained uninclosed, and therefore called
forest, or _foresta, uasi ferarum statio_, because there naturally
retired and made their abode the wild creatures, _feræ naturæ_. All this
was held to belong to the king; and when the Conqueror began to reign,
who had occasion to give away and divide large tracts amongst his
military followers, he began to exercise more strictly his prerogative
over the remainder. Not satisfied with sixty-nine forests, lying in
almost every part of the kingdom, such, and so many, says Evelyn, as no
other realm of Europe had, he laid waste a vast tract of country in
Hampshire, and created another, thence called the New Forest, because it
was the last added to the ancient ones, except that of Hampton Court,
the work of Henry VIII.
Various theories respecting the origin of this New Forest have occupied
the attention, and divided the opinions of antiquarians and historians.
Polydore Virgil asserted that the Conqueror’s motive for afforesting so
large a tract of country here, was because it enabled him to maintain it
secure from the intrusion of all but his own creatures, and thereby
always to have a most convenient station for the escape of his
followers, in case of any revolt, to their own country, or for the
secret and secure arrival of fresh forces thence. Mr. Camden, however,
has satisfactorily shewn, that no such object was attributed to him by
the chroniclers of his own and immediately succeeding times, who
certainly were sufficiently bitter against him, for his haughty temper,
and the reckless atrocities which he committed in carrying into effect
his system of policy, the thorough breaking of the Saxon spirit, and the
establishment of his own noblesse. No such motive, however plausible,
was attributed to him for five hundred years. As Mr. Carte very
reasonably suggests, if such was his intention, he would have carried it
into effect within the first five years of his reign, during which time
he was engaged in putting down disaffection, and strengthening his
position. In the pursuance of these objects he was not in the habit of
stopping short at trifles on the score of humanity. “His horrible
devastation,” says William of Malmsbury, “of great part of Yorkshire,
and all the counties belonging to England north of the Humber, was made
that the Danes and Scots invading his kingdom that way might find no
subsistence, and to punish the people for disaffection to his
government; without regarding what number of innocent persons would be
involved in the destruction.” We are told, even by one of the Norman
historians--Ord. Vit. iv. p. 314, 515, and by Ingulph. p. 79, who speak
of it with horror, that above 160,000 men, women and children, perished
by famine in those ruined counties. The devastation was such that, for
above sixty miles, where before there had been many large and
flourishing towns, besides a great number of villages and fine
country-seats, not a single hamlet was to be seen; the whole country was
uncultivated, and remained so till Henry II.’s reign.
If we date the making of this forest at the same time with the
publishing of the forest laws, it will follow that it was made merely
for the pleasures of the chase. This was natural enough, when we reflect
that he had taken up his favourite residence at Winchester; and this is
the reason assigned by all the authorities nearest to his own time. The
Saxon Chronicler, believed to be cotemporary with William, assigns this
sole reason, and adds--“William loved great deer, as if he had been
their father;” which Henry of Huntingdon copies. No trace of other
motive appears in Gemeticensis, his own chaplain, Knyton, Ordericus
Vitalis, Simon Dunelmensis, Brompton, William of Malmsbury, Florence of
Worcester, Matthew Paris, Hemingford, or other ancient authority. In
such a man the passion for the chase was cause sufficient. In all early
stages of a country, where it abounds with forests, and intellectual
resources hardly exist, hunting must constitute the great passion of
life. The Britons, the Saxons, were passionate hunters. Harold had
already restrained all forests to his own use, and William put the
finishing stroke to the system. Here, however, occurs a second point of
difference of opinion in the historians. Some tell us that he made this
forest, others, that he merely enlarged it. It is certain that the
ancient forest of Ythene existed here before; but it is probable that it
had become rather a woodland than a preserve of game; and that William’s
enlargement was almost, in fact, a new creation: and strictly speaking,
entirely so, as a forest, having its defined boundaries, its stock of
deer, its appointed officers, and its code of laws and courts:--this,
the very name of New Forest clearly implies.
Others, again, attribute to his son Rufus, the enlargement and the
devastations, and thence look upon his own death, in the very spot
where he had pulled down a church, as a direct divine judgment. There
can be little doubt but that both had a hand in it. The Conqueror
probably laid waste and depopulated so as to complete the boundaries of
his forest, and carry out his conceived plans, and Rufus went on, on the
old royal principle, of making a solitude and calling it peace, to pull
down churches, and remove what hamlets or cottages yet remained to
interfere with princely ideas of forest seclusion. That William did all
that is attributed to him, is declared by all the historians of that and
immediately succeeding times; and Gemeticensis, his own chaplain,
distinctly declares that it was the popular belief that the death of his
two sons, Richard and Rufus, and his grandson, the son of Robert, were
judgments of God upon him for his atrocities committed here in the
making of it. These atrocities consisted in laying waste the country to
the extent of thirty miles in length, or ninety in circumference, the
extent still attributed to it; destroying towns, chapels, manors and
mansion-houses; according to some writers, twenty-two mother-churches,
to others thirty-six, and to others thirty-two. Unquestionably the
number was great; two churches only being mentioned in his own Survey in
Doomsday Book, between A.D. 1083 and 1086, the 17th and 20th of his
reign, as standing in all that space, while in the rest of the county
there were 100. This violence he completed by driving out the
inhabitants, and stocking the land with deer, stags, and other game.
Such was the origin and extent of the ancient royal forests of England,
all preserved and maintained for the especial and exclusive pastime of
the kings. Truly the state of a king was then kingly indeed: 69 forests,
13 chases, and upwards of 750 parks existing in England. There were, in
Yorkshire alone, in Henry VIII.’s time, 275 woods, besides parks and
chases, most of them containing 500 acres. Over all these the king could
sport; for it was the highest honour to a subject to receive a visit
from the king to hunt in his chase, or free warren, while no subject,
except by special permission and favour, could hunt in the royal parks.
These 69 forests of immense extent, lying in all parts of England, and
occupying no small portion of its surface, all stood then for the sole
gratification of the royal pleasure of the chase, and supplying the
king’s household; and few persons have now any idea of the state,
dignity, and systematic severity of this great hunting establishment of
England, maintained through all succeeding reigns to the time of the
Commonwealth, and some part of it much longer. Each forest was an
imperium in imperio, having its staff of officers,--the lord warden, his
deputy, a steward and bow-bearer, rangers, keepers or foresters,
verdurers, agistors, regarders, bailiffs, woodwards, beadles, etc. etc.,
with their own courts. First the COURT of ATTACHMENT, held every forty
days, in which all attachments against offenders in the forest were
received, evidence heard upon them, and were enrolled to be presented at
the COURT of SWAINMOTE. This swainmote was held three times every year,
which all the swains, or free tenants, were bound to attend. The warder
or his steward presided, and the foresters, verderers, and other
ministers of the forest were the judges. Here all the attachments
enrolled in the records of the Court of Attachment were received and
examined, but no award or judgment was made or executed by this court;
but it swore in a grand jury to examine these attachments, of which all
that appeared made on sufficient grounds and evidence were reserved for
the decision of the JUSTICE-SEAT, or highest court of the forest. The
justice-seat, or Court of Eyre in the forest, was held once in three
years. Two justices in Eyre were appointed as supreme judges in these
courts: one having jurisdiction in all the forests north, and the other
over those south of the Trent. Yet there appears in the early reigns to
have been great irregularity in the appointment of these justices.
Sometimes there were two, according to the legitimate ordinance; at
others we find three going the circuit, or _jornay_, as it was called,
in Edward I.’s reign, when in the 15th year of that reign, three are
named as going the jornay of the north; viz. Sir William Vesey, Thomas
Normanville, and Richard of Gryppinge, justices. This Sir William Vesey,
Richard of Gryppinge, and their fellows, justices, are repeatedly
mentioned in the king’s writs. This might arise from the discovery that
collusion and bribery to cover peculation had been the consequence of
one justice going alone; for it is complained, that it “was fonden that
oure lorde the kynge had sustained grete and many folde hurte fro the
jornay of Robert Neville.” Great peculation and appointment of his own
creatures for his own purposes were proved against Robert Evringham, and
he was “deposed from his office of chief forestershippe of fee in the
Forest of Sherwood for ever.”[16]
[16] MS. documents respecting Sherwood Forest, in Bromley House
Library, Nottingham.
Every officer was sworn to present to the court of attachment, every
offender against the laws of the forest, for the decision of the
justices, through the process already described; a system of most
summary rigour, without favour or concealment; yet abuses still crept
in; and the long term between the coming of the justices--three
years--tended greatly to this; for as no case could be finally decided
till then, it afforded vast scope for the powerful and wealthy to try
the force of bribery on the justice, as well as made the case fearfully
severe on those who could not find bail or give security, and must
therefore be in gaol all that time; especially as a man might be taken
up on presumption. This, therefore, became a gross injustice to the
innocent.
You would imagine from the oaths of the different officers, that their
duties were all alike, for they bound them all to seize, secure, and
present for attachment all persons committing any depredations on _vert
or venison_; vert, curiously enough Anglicized--Green Hugh, _i. e._
green hue, and so continually written in the Assisæ Forestæ, meaning
every thing having a green leaf, and therefore extending from the forest
trees to the underwood and shrubs which formed cover for the game, and
also to the grass which was the food of the game. All persons seen
suspiciously strolling about on the highways, especially if in cloaks,
with dogs in leash, or out of it, pursuing small birds, squirrels, or
vermin, cutting turf, peat, or boughs, or fallen timber, heath, or fern,
without proper authority. The dwellers in the purlieus of the forest
were kept a strict eye upon; and all gates, or fences, or dykes were
presentable which were too high for the deer to pass from one part of
the forest to another. The forests were very systematically divided into
walks, or keepings, wards or regards, over which was a properly
subordinate succession of officers. The ranger had surveillance over the
principal keepers; they over their deputy keepers, and night-walkers.
The verderers had especially to look after the vert, although sworn to
watch for and bring to punishment, offenders of all kinds, and to them
must all offenders be brought to give surety to appear at the
attachment. Besides these, there were in every township, and every
regard, woodwards and their men, who attended to the felling and
accounting for all timber. There were agistors also to look after the
agistment of cattle. The swainmote was empowered to inquire and to see
that all officers punctually performed their forest duties, going
regularly their rounds; and that they paid the wages of their deputies,
so that none might be tempted to commit depredations on the game, wood,
browze, peat, turf, deers’ horns, or any other product of the forest. A
sharp vigilance was kept up on this head, and severe punishment awarded
for such offenders. No produce of the forest might be taken out of it
without a direct warrant from the justice or warden; neither cattle,
timber, dead deer, vert, nor anything whatever. Those who had freeholds
within the forest, as came to be the case in time, through grants from
kings to favourites of one kind or another, were subject to the same
restriction. And where warrant was granted for any of these purposes, or
for supplying the religious houses with wood for burning, etc., the
verderers were to see that no more was actually taken out than the
warrant allowed, and were punished if convicted of failing in this
duty.[17] Perambulations at stated periods were made throughout each
forest, its enclosures, purlieus, and boundaries, to ascertain that all
was kept in order, and that there was neither waste of vert nor
_venison_, which included all game; nor encroachment within, nor
without. The external boundaries of a forest, were not like those of a
park, walls or pales, but metes and bounds, meres, rivers, and hills,
otherwise it was not a forest.
[17] Yet a curious instance is recorded in one of the Inquisitions of
Sherwood Forest, of the way in which the vigilance of these laws was
evaded. The Countess of Newcastle, whose husband was probably at that
time governor of Newark Castle, had procured large quantities of
timber out of the forest, under a warrant to furnish such timber for
the necessary repairs of that castle. The quantity delivered led to an
inquiry, and it was found that the castle was not repaired at all, but
that the timber had been sold, and the countess had got the cash. Yet
after this it was again found, that not being able to procure another
warrant for timber, she had, however, got one for the delivery of
cord-wood for burning, and under the title of cord-wood, the
deputy-warden had supplied her with some of the best oaks of the
forest. On a second investigation it turned out that the deputy-warden
was a partner in a timber trade--that timber was thus procured through
the means of the countess’s plea of public service, and that she and
the deputy shared the spoil.
Drifts of the forest were made at least twice in the year. “By the
Assises of Pickeringe and Lancaster, the officers of the forest did use
to make drifts at least twice in the year: the first, fifteen days
before Midsummer, at the beginning of the _fencemonth_, that the forest
might be avoided and emptied of all cattle during that time. And every
commoner was then forced to come and challenge his beasts, and take them
away, or they were taken by the officers of the forest as strays. The
second drift was at Holyrood-day, when the agistors did begin to agist
the king’s demesne woods, and all beasts and cattle of all sorts then
found in them were driven by the officers of the forest to some
convenient place, and impounded, and then warning was given that every
man should come and fetch his own. Forests are driven for three causes.
First, for the avoiding of surcharging; secondly, for the avoiding of
_forreners_, who have no right; thirdly, that no beasts be commoned that
are not legally commonable, as geese, goats, sheep, and swine, which are
not commonable. Swine, however, were admitted to the woods of the king’s
forests if their noses were duly ringed, and paid for their run there, a
sum called pannage; and owners of woods in the forests might run such
swine in their own woods. Upon reasonable causes the officers of the
forest may make their drifts oftener if they will.”
_Manwood’s Forest Laws_, pp. 86-7.
Such was the general constitution of a forest, with its courts,
officers, laws, and customs; and so systematic does it seem;
surveillance and subdivision so regularly descending downward, till it
included watch and ward over every part, and the familiar acquaintance
of every forester with his own location, that one really wonders how any
Robin Hood could long escape amongst them. The difficulty of the thing
no doubt it was that contributed so much to raise his renown. But the
vast extent of the forests, the obscurity of the wooded parts, and the
immense out-boundaries laying them open to the nocturnal incursions of
marauders, still account for the traditionary exploits of deer-stealers,
in spite of the then forest-law, which itself gave a strong spice of
interest to the adventurer.
The severity of the laws under William and his immediate successors was
monstrous. “In the Saxon times,” says Blackstone, “though no man was
allowed to kill or chace the king’s deer, yet he might start any game,
pursue and kill it on his own estate, but the rigour of those new
constitutions vested the sole property of all the game in England in the
king alone; and no man was entitled to disturb any fowl of the air, or
any beast of the field, of such kinds as were specifically reserved for
the royal amusement of the sovereign, without express license from the
king, of a chase or a free warren; and these franchises were granted as
much to preserve the breed of animals as to indulge the subject. From a
similar principle to which, though the forest laws are now mitigated,
and by degrees grown entirely obsolete, yet from this root has sprung a
bastard slip, known by the name of the GAME LAW, now arrived to and
wantoning in its highest vigour; both founded upon the same notion of
permanent property in wild creatures, and both productive of the same
tyranny to the commons; but with this difference, that the forest laws
established only one mighty hunter throughout the land; the game laws
have raised a little Nimrod in every manor. And in one respect, the
ancient law was much less unreasonable than the modern, for the king’s
grantee of a chase or free-warren might kill game in every part of his
franchise, but now, though a freeholder of less than 100_l._ a-year is
forbidden to kill a partridge upon his own estate, yet nobody else, not
even the lord of the manor, unless he hath a grant of free-warren, can
do it without committing a trespass, and subjecting himself to an
action.”--_Commentaries_, iv. 415, 8vo.
The full rigour of the forest laws of the Norman dynasty must be a
curious subject of contemplation to an Englishman now. William decreed
the eyes of any person to be pulled out, who took either a buck or a
boar. Rufus made the stealing of a doe, a hanging matter. The taking a
hare was fined 20_s._, and a coney 10_s._, as money was then! Eadmer
adds, that fifty persons of fortune, being apprehended by the last
prince for killing his bucks, were forced to purge themselves by the
fire of ordeal, etc. Henry I. made no distinction between him who killed
a man, and him who killed a buck; and punished them who destroyed the
game, though not in the forest, either by forfeiture of their goods or
loss of limbs. The monstrous severities of Geoffrey de Langley, who, in
the reign of Henry II. had a patent for all benefits accruing from the
expeditation of dogs, and rode through most parts of England with an
armed band, committing the greatest oppressions, and extorting vast
sums, especially from the northern gentry, are recorded with indignation
by Matthew Paris. Richard I. enacted mutilation and pulling out of eyes
for hunting in the forest, though he afterwards relaxed a little, and
contented himself with banishment, imprisonment, or fine. Whoever was
summoned to the chase, and refused to go, paid a fine of 50_s._ to the
king.
The feeling created amongst the people by this bloody code, may be
imagined by the language of John of Salisbury, who, after speaking of
the higher offences, says,--“What is more extraordinary is, that it is
often made by law criminal to set traps or snares for birds, to allure
them by springes and pipes, or use any craft to take them; and offenders
are punished by forfeiture of goods, loss of limbs, or even death. One
would suppose that the birds of the air and the fish of the sea were
common to all; but they belong to the crown, and are claimed by the
forest laws wherever they fly. Hands off! keep clear! lest you incur the
guilt of high treason, and fall into the clutch of the hunters. The
swains are driven from their fields, while the beasts of the forest have
a liberty of roving; and the farmer’s meadows are taken from him to
increase their pasture. The new-sown grounds are taken from the farmer,
the pastures from the grazier and shepherd; the beehives are turned away
from the flowery bank, and the very bees are hardly allowed their
natural liberty.”--_Polycraticon_, i. 4.
Ah! Johannes Sarisburiensis, thou wert a radical! Can any body read the
indignant spirit of this passage, and say that radicalism is anything
new under the sun? This is the very soul of Hampden. The inhumanity of
those proceedings occasioned frequent disturbances, till the revolt of
the barons extorted from Henry III. the CHARTA DE FORESTA, by which he
repealed those severe laws, and enacted others more equitable. These,
again, were from time to time softened by different monarchs, as
civilization and popular power and influence advanced, by what are
called _Assises of the Forest_, which were a kind of revision and
re-enactment of the forest laws, by different kings; omitting or
modifying any former provisions which might seem contrary to the spirit
of the time; and adding such others as were deemed necessary. As, for
instance, the assise of Edward I., the preamble of which was
thus:--“Here followeth the Assise of Forest of our lorde the kinge E.,
sonne of kinge H. and his commandements of his forests in englonde, made
by the assent and counsell of Archbusshoppes, busshoppes, abbots, earls,
barons, knyghtes of all his realme.” This consists of twenty items; and
provides principally, that any person found in the forest, or the woods
of the forest, trespassing on the venison, shall be taken, and, on
conviction of hunting or taking the king’s venison, he shall be
imprisoned, and not delivered without the king’s especial commandment,
or that of his justice of the forest.[18] That all trespassers on the
vert shall be taken before the verderers, and they shall find sufficient
surety to come before the next court of attachment; and such attachment
shall be enrolled, to be presented to the justices of the forest when
they next come into those parts to hold the pleas of the forest. That
none who held woods within the forest should suffer those woods to be
without a keeper, or they should be taken into the king’s hands again.
Such holders of woods, or any other persons inhabiting within the
forest, should not have any bows, arrows, or arbalasts; or any brach,
greyhound, or any other engine “to hurte the king of his Deare.” But any
dogs introduced into the forest shall be expeditated; or, according to
the English phrase, lamed, so that they may not be able to seize the
deer; and that the expeditation, or laming of dogs, shall be made every
three years. This practice of laming is differently described by
different writers. Some define it as consisting in cutting off at least
one of the fore-feet; others in cutting off the claws only; and others,
in cutting out the fleshy part of both fore-paws. Probably the practice
differed in different forests, and different ages. At all events, the
dogs were so mutilated as to be unable to seize a deer; the Latin term
implies the actual lopping off the foot. Future assizes confine this
laming to mastiffs; no greyhounds, brachs, or brackets being allowed
entrance at all. No mower was allowed to bring “a great mastiff to drive
away the deer of our lord the king, but little dogs to look after such
things as lie open.”
[18] An old rhyme, full of mystery to uninitiated ears, contained the
law of attachment in this case. Any person was to be seized and
conveyed before a forester or verderer, who was found,--
At dog-draw, stable-stand,
Back-berond, or bloody-hand.
Which mean,--_at dog-draw_, having a dog in a leash, following a deer
by the scent, in order to come upon it and slay it; or having wounded
a deer, and following the dog-draw, or guidance of the dog to overtake
it. _At stable-stand_, standing in the forest with bow ready to
discharge at the deer, or with a dog in a leash ready to slip him on
its appearance. _At back-bear_ or _back-berond_, actually carrying any
forest property away. _At bloody-hand_, with hands or person bloody,
as from the actual slaughter of game. Though three of these are truly
called by the lawyers _presumption_, they were held sufficient for
attachment and conviction.
The assize continues--but no holders of _foreign_ woods in the forest
shall agiste[19] before the regular time of the king’s agistment, “which
begins at mychalmas and lastes to martinmasse then next followinge.”
That none shall assart[20] in the forest without being taken before the
verderer, and giving surety to appear at the next attachment. That no
tanner or whittawer of leather dwell in the forest, out of boroughs,
towns, etc. That any archbishops, bishops, barons, or knight being found
hunting, the forester shall demand “a wedde and a pledge,” and if he
refuse, the forester shall see “his dede,” and cause it to be enrolled
to be presented before the justice of the forest. Other assizes say,
that the bodies of such dignitaries, whether temporal or spiritual,
shall be seized till they give security for their appearance; but that
any such nobleman, or dignitary, being sent for to the king on any
business, shall have the privilege of hunting one or two deer as he goes
through the forest, and the same on his return, provided it be in view
of the forester, otherwise he shall blow a horn, lest he seem to steal
it.
[19] That is, turn in cattle to graze, at so much per head, which was
done in most forests, and the money paid to the verderer,--a certain
number of persons mostly having a right of common besides, by grant or
charter.
[20] Root up the covert and make a clearing.
That any man going along the king’s highway, through a forest, with a
bow, shall bear it without string; or with dogs, he shall have them
coupled, and his greyhounds “knytted in a leash.” That if any damage be
done to the king’s vert or venison, or waste, of which no rational
account can be given, the foresters, or verderers, under whose care the
said charges have been, shall be taken, and no satisfaction but their
own bodies shall be received till the king, or his justice, have had
their will of them. Yet, so early as Henry II., it was found that all
these strict provisions being insufficient to prevent waste of the
woods, and “extreme minishing of the deere,” the office of regarder was
established. The regarders were originally to be knights, but “other
good people” were afterwards admitted. They were to be chosen by the
king’s writ, and there were to be twelve in each forest. The foresters
and verderers were gentlemen: the former appointed by the king’s
letters-patent; the latter by writ in full county, like our present
members of parliament; yet were the regarders set as inspectors over
them. They were to go through every part of the forest, accompanied by
the foresters, verderers, woodwards, bailiffs, and beadles, and examine
into the state of vert and venison; comparing them with the reports of
their predecessors, and seeing that no waste, or embezzlement, or
improper, or superabundant agistment was made; that no assarts, or
purprestures[21] were attempted. This, however, they could not do when
they pleased. They were summoned by writ, once in three years,
preparatory to the coming of the justice to hold his pleas, to whom they
were to deliver their roll, duly signed and sealed.
[21] Encroachments and obstructions of several kinds, such as
impediments in the highways, turning dykes, building swine-cotes,
mills, etc.
Queen Elizabeth, who found that, during the minority of her brother
Edward and the troubled reign of her sister Mary, great waste,
destruction, and embezzlement had taken place, made repeated inquests
into the state of the forests by her commissioners, and had general
surveys and valuations made. She descends in her assizes to the very
bees, which it seems built then abundantly in our woods, as they do in
the American forests now--the old, hollow oaks, being very storehouses
of honey. Hawks, herons, the nests of hawks, and every species of beast
that had been held the legitimate denizens of forests by her
predecessors, as stags, bucks, hares, badgers, foxes, and even cats and
squirrels, are enumerated.
These forest laws continued till the Commonwealth. One court of justice
was held after the Restoration; but after the Revolution of 1688, they
fell into desuetude, and now all offences against the forests are
cognizable by the common laws of the land.
For the fullest information on this subject, see Cowel, Heskett, Coke,
and Blackstone; or Manwood on Forest Laws.
The English Forests were formerly as follows:
1. Aiden, Northumberland.
2. Allerdale, Cumberland.
3. Amsty, Yorkshire.
4. Arden, Warwick.
5. Ashdown, Sussex.
6. Bere, Hants.
7. Bernwood, Bucks.
8. Beverley, York.
9. Blakemore, or Forest of Watchet, Dorset.
10. Braden, Wilts.
11. Charnwood, Leicester.
12. Cheviot, Northumberland.
13. Chute, Hants.
14. Clun.
15. Cors.
16. Dartmoor, Devon.
17. Darval, Hereford.
18. Dean, Gloucester.
19. Deeping, Lincoln.
20. Delamere, Cheshire.
21. Epping, Essex.
22. Exmore, Devon.
23. Feckenham, Worcester.
24. Gillingham, Somerset.
25. Gáltres, York.
26. Hainault, Essex.
27. Hampton Court, Middlesex.
28. Hardwicke, York.
29. Hartlebury.
30. Huckestow, Shropshire.
31. Inglewood, Cumberland.
32. Kingswood, Gloucester.
33. Knaresborough, York.
34. Langden, Durham.
35. Leonard.
36. Lee.
37. Leicester, Leicester.
38. Mendip, Somerset.
39. Malvern, Worcester.
40. Martindale, Cumberland.
41. Maxwell, Cheshire.
42. Needwood, Stafford.
43. New Forest, Hants.
44. Pamber, Hants.
45. Peak, Derbyshire.
46. Penrise.
47. Perbroke, Dorset.
48. Rath.
49. Riddlesdale, Northumberland.
50. Rockingham, Northampton.
51. Rychiche, Somerset.
52. Salcey, Northampton.
53. Savornac, Wilts.
The only forest in possession of a subject.
54. Selwood, Somerset.
55. Sherwood, Nottingham.
56. Staines, Middlesex.
57. Teesdale, Durham.
58. Waltham, Essex.
59. Whittlebury, Northampton.
60. Wichwood, Oxford.
61. Wencedale.
62. Westbere.
63. Windsor, Berks.
64. Whinfield, Westmorland.
65. Wirrol, Cheshire.
66. Whitby, Yorkshire.
67. Woolmer.
68. Wyre, Worcester.
69. Wrokene, Salop.
Of these, most are now dis-afforested, and have left only their names.
Those which remain are under the management of a board of commissioners;
the chief of whom is, by virtue of his office, always one of the
ministers of the Crown. Needwood is principally inclosed, leaving,
however, a portion belonging to the crown, and one lodge. It had
formerly four wards and four keepers, with each a handsome lodge, now in
the hands of different private gentlemen. In Elizabeth’s reign it was
about 24 miles in circumference, and in 1658 it contained 9220 acres of
land. In 1684 it contained 47,150 trees, and 10,000 cord of hollies and
underwood, valued at 30,710_l._ It and Bagot’s Park, formerly part of
it, still contain some of the largest oaks in England. Windsor is the
Royal Park, and the most complete and splendid example of a park in the
world.--Of New Forest, and Sherwood, I propose to speak more
particularly.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
NEW FOREST.
This forest seems to retain not only more of the forest character than
all our other forests, but to have maintained more exactly its ancient
boundaries. William of Malmsbury says, the Conqueror laid waste thirty
miles of country for this forest. The perambulation of the 22d of
Charles II., extending from Milton south along the Avon west, to
Bramshire north, and within Southampton Water east, by Fawley and Boldre
back to Milton, includes about thirty miles square, and this is the
extent that is now attributed to it by the inhabitants of the
neighbourhood. In the present hundred of New Forest, we have the
parishes of Minstead, Fawley, and Boldre; the chapels, or curacies of
Lyndhurst, Beaulieu, Exbury, and Brokenhurst. It is indeed the only one
of our forests which now can give us a perfect idea of what an English
forest was in the feudal ages. It has not acquired, like Windsor, too
much of a park-like character by containing a royal residence; nor has
it been enclosed, and shaped into quadrangular fields: but there it is,
in its original extent,--vast, wild, stocked with deer; with its
alternations of woods and heaths, morasses and thickets; interspersed
with hamlets and farms, and forest-huts, as were the forests of old.
There are the glorious ruins of Beaulieu, of which the able historian of
Winchester thus speaks:--“The curious traveller who visits Beaulieu,
descends at once into a lovely vale, enclosed with lofty trees, covered
with the richest verdure, and watered by a flowing river, the whole of
which seem to be the effect of magic. In the most enchanting part of
this scene stands the ancient abbey. He will see, in the first place,
the outward gate of the sanctuary, to which the brave but unfortunate
Margaret of Anjou, the venturous impostor, Perkin Warbeck, and other
fugitive victims of the laws, fled, with breathless haste, for safety.
He will next come to the abbot’s house, with its turrets, moats, and
other miniature fortifications, as perfect, and in as good condition as
when it was first built. Here fugitives of distinction were entertained.
From this he will enter and survey the spacious and noble refectory, now
the parish church, rich with innumerable ornaments and monuments of past
ages. Finally, he will trace in the splendid remains of the cloisters,
chapter-house, and church, the chief effort, if not of the piety, at
least of the taste and magnificence of the unfortunate king John.”
As you go from Southampton to Lyndhurst, you have a fine ride through
the lower regions of the forest, and see enough to make you desire to
steal away into the beautiful woodlands. Lovely streams come winding out
of its shades, and hasten towards the sea. You get glimpses of forest
glades, and peeps under the trees into distant park-like expanses, or
heathy-wastes. The deer are wandering here and there: here you see whole
troops of those ponies peculiar to this forest; pheasants and partridges
come often running out on the way before you. All about grow hollies,
which were encouraged in most ancient forests for winter browze; and you
have glimpses of forest trees that were enough to enrich all the
landscape painters in the world. But if you wish to know really what
New Forest is, you must plunge into its very heart, and explore its
farthest recesses. You may go on from wood to wood, and from heath to
heath; now coming out on the high ground, as on the Ringwood road, the
wild forest lying visible for miles around, and the country towards
Southampton and to the very sea, all spread out wide and beautifully to
the eye;--now descending into profound solitudes, and the depth of
woodland gloom. It is a wild, wide region, in which you may satiate
yourselves with nature in its primitive freedom. In Bilhaghe, in the
forest of Sherwood, you find a fragment of an ancient forest unique in
its kind,--a region of old oaks, shattered by the tempests of five
hundred years, and standing in all the hoary grandeur of age; and are
thereby struck with a quick feeling of the mighty flight of time,--of
the utter change and revolution of manners and government since those
trees were in their prime; but when you step into the New Forest, you
step at once out of the present world into the past. You do not see it
existing before your eyes as a remnant of antiquity, but as a portion of
it, into which, as by some charm, you are carried. It is not a decaying
relic; it is a perfect and present thing. The trees are not scathed and
hollow skeletons, except in some few places, but stand the full-grown
and vigorous giants of the wood. This is owing to the timber being cut
down for the navy ere it begins to perish, and yet being left to attain
a sufficient growth, and to furnish vast woods that extend over hill and
dale, and give you foot-room for days and weeks without fear of
exhausting the novelty. It looks now as it must have looked to the eye
of one of our Norman monarchs, except that the marks of the Conqueror’s
ravages and fires are worn out; the ruins of churches and cottages are
buried beneath the accumulated mosses and earth of ages; and peaceful
smoke ascends from woodland habitations.
In my brief visit to it, I set out from Lyndhurst, and walked up to
Stony-Cross, the place of Rufus’s death. From the moment that I turned
up out of Lyndhurst, I seemed to have entered an ancient region. There
was an old-world primitive air about every thing, that filled me with a
peculiar feeling of poetry. I left behind the nineteenth century, and
was existing in the twelfth or fourteenth. Open knolls, and ascending
woodlands on one side, covered with majestic beeches, and the village
children playing under them; on the other, the most rustic cottages,
almost buried in the midst of their orchard trees, and thatched as
Hampshire cottages only are--in such projecting abundance,--such flowing
lines. Thatch does not here seem the stiff and intractable thing it does
elsewhere; nor is it cut in that square, straight-haired fashion; but it
seems the kindliest thing in the world. It bends over gables and antique
casements in the roof, and comes sweeping down over fronts resting on
pillars, and forming verandas and porches; or over the ends of the
houses, down to the very ground, forming the nicest sheds for plants, or
places to deposit garden-tools, milk-pails, or other rural apparatus.
The whole of the cottages thereabout are in equal taste with the roof;
so different to the red, staring, square brick houses of manufacturing
districts. They seem, as no doubt they are, erected in the spirit, and
under the influence, of the _genius loci_. The beehives in their rustic
rows; the little crofts, all belong to a primitive country. I went on;
now coming to small groups of such places; now to others of superior
pretensions, but equally blent with the spirit of the surrounding
nature;--little paradises of cultivated life. As I advanced, heathery
hills stretched away on one hand; woods came down thickly and closely on
the other, and a winding road beneath the shade of large old trees,
conducted me to one of the most retired and peaceful of hamlets. It was
Minstead. There was an old school-house; and beneath the large trees
that overshadowed the way, lay huge trunks of trees cut ready for
conveyance to the naval dockyards; and the forest children, on their way
to school, were playing amongst them; now climbing upon them, now
pushing each other off with merry laughter; boys and girls, as I
approached, scampering away, and into the school.
I know not how it is, but such places of woodland and old-fashioned
seclusion, of such repose and picturesque simplicity, always bring
strongly to my mind the stories of Tieck. There must be a great
similarity in the aspect of these scenes, and of those which he has so
much delighted to describe. I thought of the old woman with her dog and
bird. Every solitary cottage seemed just as hers was. I seemed to hear
the birch-trees shiver in the breeze, the dog bark, and the bird sing
its magic song:
Alone in wood so gay
’Tis good to stay,
Morrow like to-day
For ever and aye:
O, I do love to stay
Alone in wood so gay.
It was early autumn. All birds really had ceased to sing; and the deep
hush of nature but made more distinct this spirit-song, amid the
delicious reveries in which I went wandering along, enveloped as in a
heavenly cloud. All over the moorland ground spread the crimson glow of
the heather. I went onward and upward; passing the gates of forest
lodges, and looking down into valleys, whence arose the smoke of huts
and charcoal fires. And anon, I stood upon the airy height, and saw
woods below, and felt near me solitude, and a spirit that had brooded
there for ages. I passed over high, still heaths, treading on plants
that grow only in nature’s most uncultivated soil, to the mighty beeches
of Boldre Wood, and thence away to fresh masses of forest. Herds of
red-deer rose from the fern, and went bounding away, and dashed into the
depths of the woods; troops of those grey and long-tailed forest horses
turned to gaze as I passed down the open glades; and the red squirrels
in hundreds, scampered up from the ground where they were feeding on
fallen mast and the kernels of pine-cones, and stamped and chattered on
the boughs above me.
A lady who till recently lived on the skirts of the forest, and who
moreover has walked through the spirit-land with power, and is known and
honoured by all true lovers of pathos and imagination, had solemnly
warned me not to attempt to pass through the larger woods without a
guide; but what guide, except such as herself, or as the venerable
William Gilpin would have been, could one have that we should not wish
away ten times in a minute? If we must be lost, why, so let it be,--but
let us be lost in the freedom of one’s own thoughts and feelings.
Delighted with the true woodland wildness and solemnity of beauty, I
roved onward through the widest woods that came in my way, and once,
indeed, I imagined that a guide would really have been agreeable.
Awaking as from a dream, I saw far around me one deep shadow, one thick
and continuous roof of boughs, and thousands of hoary boles standing
clothed, as it were, with the very spirit of silence. A track in the
wood seemed to lead in the direction I aimed at; but having gone on for
an hour, here admiring the magnificent sweep of some grand old trees as
they hung into a glade or a ravine, some delicious opening in the deep
woods, or the grotesque figures of particular trees which seemed to have
been blasted into blackness, and contorted into inimitable crookedness
by the savage genius of the place,--I found myself again before one of
those very remarkable trees which I had passed long before. It was too
singular to be mistaken, and I paused to hold a serious council with
myself. As I stood, I became more than ever sensible of the tomb-like
silence in which I was. There was not the slightest sound of running
water, whispering leaf, or the voice of any creature; the beating of my
own heart, the ticking of my watch, were alone heard. It was that deep
stillness which has been felt there by others.
The watchmen from the castle top
Almost might hear an acorn drop,
It was so calm and still;
Might hear the stags in Hocknell groan,
And catch, by fits, the distant moan
Of King-garn’s little rill.
_The Red King._
Whichever way I looked the forest stretched in one dense twilight. It
was the very realization of that appalling hush and bewildering
continuity of shade so often described by travellers in the American
woods. I had lost now all sense of any particular direction, and the
only chance of reaching the outside of the wood was to go as much as
possible in one direct line. Away then I went--but soon found myself
entangled in the thickest underwood--actually overhead in rank weeds;
now on the verge of an impassable bog, and now on that of a deep ravine.
Fortunately for me, the summer had been remarkably dry, and the ravines
were dry too,--I could descend into them, and climb out on the other
side. But the more I struggled on, the more I became confounded. Pausing
to consider my situation, I saw a hairy face and a large pair of eyes
fixed on me. Had it been a satyr, I felt that I should not have been
surprised, it seemed so satyr-like a place. It was only a stag--which,
with its head just above the tall fern, and its antlers amongst the
boughs, looked very much like Kühleborn of the Undine story. As I moved
towards him he dashed away through the jungle, for so only could it be
called, and I could long hear the crash of his progress. Ever and anon,
huge swine with a fierce guffaw rushed from their lairs--one might have
imagined them the wild boars of a German forest. At length I caught the
tinkle of a cow-bell--a cheerful sound, for it must be in some open part
of the forest, and from its distinctness not far distant. Thitherward I
turned, and soon emerged into a sort of island in the sea of woods, a
farm, like an American clearing. I sate down on a fallen tree to cool
and rest myself, and was struck with the beauty of the place. These
green fields lying so peacefully amid the woods, which, in one place
pushed forward their scattered trees, in another retreated; here
sprinkling them out thinly on the common, and there hanging their masses
of dark foliage over a low-thatched hut or two. The quiet farm-house
too, surrounded by its belt of tall hollies; the flocks of geese
dispersed over the short turf, and the cows coming home out of the
forest to be milked: it was a most peaceful picture, and unlike all that
citizens are accustomed to contemplate, except in Spenser or the German
writers. These cow-bells too, have something in their sound so quaint
and woodland. They are slung by a leathern strap from the neck of the
leader, having neither sound nor shape of a common bell, but are like a
tin canister, with a ring at the bottom to suspend them by. They seem
like the first rudimental attempt at a bell, and have a sound dull and
horny, rather than clear and ringing. The leaders of these herds are
said to have a singular sagacity in tracking the woods, and finding
their way to particular spots and home again, by extraordinary and
intricate ways.
Having now a clear conception of my position, I proceeded leisurely
towards Stony-Cross, the reputed place of the catastrophe of Rufus. The
tree whence the fatal arrow glanced, or, at least, the one marked by
popular tradition as it, was standing till about a century ago, when a
triangular stone was set down to identify the spot; with these
inscriptions, one on each side:
1. Here stood the oak, on which an arrow, shot by Sir Walter Tyrrell
at a stag, glanced and struck King William the Second, surnamed Rufus,
in the breast, of which he instantly died, on the second of August,
A.D. 1100.
* * * * *
2. King William the Second, surnamed Rufus, being slain, as is before
related, was laid in a cart belonging to one Purkess, and drawn from
hence to Winchester, and was buried in the cathedral church of that
city.
* * * * *
3. A.D. 1745: That the place where an event so memorable had happened,
might not be hereafter unknown, this stone was set up by John Lord
Delawar, who has seen the tree growing in this place.
* * * * *
This place is called in Doomsday Book, Truham, by Leland, Thorougham, by
other writers, Choringham, and Chuham. It is now known by the name of
Stony-Cross. Leland says that, in his time (the reign of Henry VIII.) a
chapel was standing near the place, most probably built by some of King
William’s descendants, to pray for his soul; it being the general
opinion of the time, that the divine judgment for his cruelties in the
forest had fallen upon him here more expressly, because here he had
actually destroyed a church. No trace of such a thing is now visible,
and indeed, it is one of the singularities of this spot, that so little
vestige of the destroyed villages, churches, etc. is to be discovered.
Great numbers of people visit Stony-Cross in the summer. Large parties
come out from Southampton, Winchester, and the neighbouring towns, and
pic-nic under the trees that are scattered about; and a pleasanter place
for a summer day’s excursion cannot be well imagined. There is a great
charm in visiting a spot marked by a singular historical event 700 years
ago, and finding it so similar in all its present features.
It lies on a wide slope amongst the woods. From the Ringwood road above,
splendid views over the country present themselves; not far off is a
capital inn, and below are a few scattered cottages, standing amid their
orchards, a picture of forest simplicity and peace. When I was there,
the trees hung with loads of fruit, yet the little wooden houses stood,
some of them empty and unprotected; their inhabitants, I suppose, being
out working in the woods. I sate on the trunk of a fallen tree, and
contemplated them with a feeling of delight. Supposing that it might be
in one of them that the descendants of the Purkess who conveyed the
king’s body to Winchester, lived, I went to the only one where there
appeared anybody at home, to inquire, and learned that Purkess had lived
at Minstead, a mile off. This village is said to have received its name
from the exclamation of Rufus, when the arrow struck him;--“O myne
stede!” Yet he is said to have died instantly: if, therefore, this were
the spot of his death, how came Minstead by the name? But the house of
Purkess was at Minstead; and the man also is said to have lived near, in
a small hut, and maintained his family by burning charcoal. Possibly the
difficulty may be explained by what is very likely, that Purkess might
be working in the wood at the time of the accident, and conveyed the
body to his house before he conveyed it thence to Winchester in his
cart. The name of Purkess is not mentioned by any historian, but the
fact of the body being so conveyed is, and constant tradition says that
Purkess was the man, and that he received as a reward the grant of an
acre or two round his hut. His male descendants have continued to occupy
the same house, and carry on the same trade from that time till very
recently. The last of the lineal occupiers of the hut died an old man a
few years ago; his daughter had married away, and his son, having
learned some other trade, had gone to Southampton to practise it; so
that here a singular residence of 700 years ends. The family is said to
be the most ancient in the county. It was said that a piece of the wheel
of the cart on which the body was conveyed, had always been preserved in
the hut. When I asked if this were true, “Yes,” said the cottager, “the
old man had a curious old piece of wood that he used to shew, and when
the parties were gone, he used to laugh and say, ‘it did very well for
the gentlemen.’” Alas! for the honour of all relics that are too
shrewdly inquired into!
Mrs. Southey, on reading the former edition, wrote me the following
interesting particulars of the Purkess family. “Many of the race and
name are still living in and about Minstead. The old cottage of _the_
Purkess who ‘found the monarch’s corse,’ stood close to an estate of my
father’s, now in possession of the Buckleys, where some of my childish
years were spent. A damsel of the family,--Lydia Purkess, a true forest
damsel, who had three or four colts for her portion, and used to break
them in herself without saddle or bridle, other than a rope,--was a
great ally of mine, wee thing that I was, bringing me whortle-berries,
and service-berries, and dormice, and all sorts of things, to our
trysting-place in the holly hedge that divided our domains. The same
damsel, when a _little broken in_ herself, became in after years our
servant, and lived _here_ many years, till she married. She came to
visit me the other day, and I made her vivify my recollection about the
old cottage and the cart wheel. The forester you questioned on the
subject was an _envious churl_. The cottage was pulled down when
falling, about five years ago. The part of _the_ wheel did exist (who
dares question our forest creed?) in the possession of the _same
Purkesses_ till the death of my Lydia’s grandfather, and what became of
it then she cannot tell. When George III. came last into Hampshire,
taking up his abode at Cuffnell, near Minstead, he sent for the heir of
the Purkesses and their heirloom, the wheel, but it was with ‘the things
which have been and are no more.’ I have preserved a sketch of the old
cottage; without doubt, I should think, _one_ of the most ancient, if
not _the most_, in the forest. The reed-pen drawing I send you is a
fac-simile of that sketch.”
[Illustration]
And still--so runs our forest creed,
Flourish the pious yeoman’s seed,
Ev’n in the self-same spot:
One horse and cart their little store,
Like their forefathers; neither more
Nor less, the children’s lot.--_The Red King._
Much interesting information respecting this fine old forest is to be
found in “Gilpin’s Forest Scenery.” The Rev. William Gilpin lived at
Boldre, in a sweet old parsonage, in a fine situation, facing noble
woods. He built and endowed a school-house there, out of the profits of
the sale of his drawings, and lies buried in that churchyard. I visited
his tomb with Mrs. Southey, who lived near, and who, like all poetical
people who live near one, has an attachment to the forest as
enthusiastic as that of her venerable friend Gilpin himself.
Gilpin supposes that the peculiar breed of wild horses with which this
forest abounds, are a race descended from the Spanish jennets, driven
ashore on the coast of Hampshire in the dispersion of the Invincible
Armada. Great numbers of these are annually taken and sold. They are
useful for any kind of employment, and are remarkable for being
sure-footed. The colts are either hunted down by horsemen, or caught by
stratagem. He gives also a curious account of herding the hogs in this
forest, which has been so frequently quoted that most readers must be
familiar with it.
There is a numerous population within the limits of this forest; having
got a habitation there by one means or another. On the skirts of the
forest, and round its vast heaths, are numbers of poor huts, whose
inmates have very little visible means of existence, but profess
themselves to be woodmen, charcoal-burners, and so on; but it is pretty
well understood that poaching and smuggling are their more probable
vocations. Some of their cabins are the rudest erections of boughs,
turf, and heather. Their poles for charcoal-burning are reared in huge
pyramids, with the smaller ends uppermost; and they tell a story in the
forest, of a popular physician who was sent for on some urgent occasion,
and coming to a certain place was met by a party of men, who told him he
must submit to be blindfolded. He did not feel in a condition to resist,
and therefore acquiesced in the proposal with an apparent good will,
though inly not so well pleased with the adventure. He continued to see
sufficiently to discover that they took him down a wild and dismal glen.
It was evening; and the light of the charcoal fires was seen glimmering
here and there. They came to a huge pile of poles, which the men partly
removed, and led him through a sort of labyrinthine passage within them,
where his bandage was removed, and he found his patient lying in the
midst of a hut, which furnished plenty of evidence that it was not
merely the retreat, but the depôt of smugglers. Without, however,
seeming to notice anything but his patient, he prescribed, received his
fee, was again bandaged, and reconducted to the spot where he had been
met, and wished a very good night.
“Foresters and Borderers,” says John Evelyn, “are not generally so civil
and reasonable as might be wished.” And that seems to be exactly the
character of those in the New Forest. Many of them, like those in the
woods of America, are mere squatters, but the attempt to disturb them is
much the same as to disturb a hornets’ nest. Conscious that there is no
strength but in making common cause, they are all up in arms at any
attempt to dislodge any of them. A few years ago, I read in the
newspapers of an attempt of the farmers to remove some of these
suspicious neighbours to a greater distance, which brought out such a
host of hostile foresters against them, threatening to burn their houses
over their heads, as compelled them to send for the military. This is
just in keeping with the character given of them in the neighbourhood.
They are a fine race of men, say they, but many of them desperate. In
severe winters the distress and destitution of these wild people have
sometimes been found to be beyond description, both in intensity and
extent.
In this forest are nine walks, and to each a keeper. It has also two
rangers, a bowbearer, and landwarden. There is also an officer of modern
date in the constitution of a forest, the purveyor, appointed by the
commissioners of the dockyards at Plymouth, whose business is to assign
timber for the use of the navy. There are also various inferior
officers, as vermin killers, etc. Many of these offices are now merely
sinecures, and are held by gentlemen who rarely see the forest; the
greater part of their concern with it being to receive their salaries,
and the number of fat bucks belonging by prescription to the office. The
lodges were handsome buildings, fit for the residence of any gentleman,
and were mostly so occupied. The one at Lyndhurst, called “The King’s
House,” where George III. used to take up his residence during his
hunting expeditions, is a substantial brick building close to the road.
In it is preserved one of the stirrups of Rufus.
And still, in merry Lyndhurst hall,
Red William’s stirrup decks the wall;
Who lists, the sight may see;
And a fair stone, in green Malwood,
Informs the traveller where stood
The memorable tree.
In a note to this stanza of “The Red King,” a poem on the death of
Rufus, by William Stewart Rose, bowbearer of the New Forest, and
therefore, as he himself tells us, successor to Sir Walter Tyrrell, Mr.
Rose says--“the stirrup, suspended among smoked escutcheons of the royal
arms, and stags’ antlers, makes a good addition to the forest ornaments
of the hall of judicature. The justice-seat and bar are of ancient and
massive oak; an enormous bacon-rack of the same age and materials,
surmounts the whole. The green habits of the judge and officers assort
well with the rest; and it is impossible to see a court held under this
sylvan pomp and circumstance--to view the mixed and oddly accoutred
rabble of people attached--to hear their defences, founded on some wild
notions of natural law, delivered in an uncouth jargon, still
considerably dashed with Anglo-Saxon--to observe the _sang-froid_ with
which they hear the decision of their judges, and, not least, to observe
the prompt dispatch of justice--it is impossible, I say, to witness such
a scene (as a spectator once observed to me), without being transported
in imagination back to the fourteenth century.”
With the exception of this and Lady-Cross Lodge, all the forest lodges
now standing are those appropriated to the use of the under-keepers.
Those appropriated to the principal keeper were all pulled down on the
decease of the last _royal_ Lord Warden, H. R. H. the Duke of
Gloucester. Boldrewood was the last that fell, on the death of the
Dowager Lady Londonderry, to whom it was lent by her son, the present
Marquess.
The fall of these fine old lodges reminds us of one feature which this
forest and its neighbourhood possessed in Catholic times, and which it
has never lost, the glorious old abbeys. We have already spoken of
Beaulieu, but never of Netley and of Binstead in the Isle of Wight
opposite, so beautifully alluded to by Mr. Moile in his most
extraordinary poems. The State Trials, which few people are acquainted
with, but all lovers of poetry ought to know, must have also conferred
something of their own character.
“In Netley Abbey,--on the neighbouring isle,
The woods of Binstead shade as fair a pile;--
Where sloping meadows fringe the shores with green,
A river of the ocean rolls between,
Whose murmurs, borne on sunny winds, disport
Through oriel windows, and a cloistered court;
O’er hills so fair, o’er terraces so sweet,
The sea comes twice each day to kiss their feet;--
Where sounding caverns mine the garden bowers,
Where groves intone where many an ilex towers,
And many a fragrant breath exhales from fruit and flowers:--
And lowing herds and feathered warblers there
Make mystic concords with repose and prayer;
Mixed with the hum of apiaries near,
The mill’s far cataract, and the sea-boy’s cheer,
Whose oars beat time to litanies at noon,
Or hymns at complin by the rising moon;
Where, after chimes, each chapel echoes round
Like one aerial instrument of sound,
Some vast harmonious fabric of the Lord’s.”
The Commissioners of Woods and Forests have made extensive plantations
in various parts of the forest, which appear in a thriving condition,
and are belted with a variety of pines--Scotch, silver fir, Weymouth
pine, pinasters, etc., whose contrasted foliage makes a rich appearance.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III.
SHERWOOD FOREST.
New Forest, as we have now seen, still retains its completeness as a
forest--its herds of deer, its keepers going their daily rounds, its
wild horses, and swine almost as wild, and all its ancient extent of
wastes, woodlands, and forest people. A widely different condition does
this once noble forest exhibit. It was more than all celebrated as the
scene of the exploits of Robin Hood, and his merry men. In his day, it
extended from the town of Nottingham to Whitby in Yorkshire, or rather
it and the forest of Whitby lay open to each other, in perfect
contiguity. At a much later day it extended far into Derbyshire; but,
after many dis-afforestings and encroachments, in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth, it contained an equal space with that of New Forest at
present. Here our Norman kings delighted to come and enjoy their hunting
in summer at their palace of Clypstone, built by Henry II.; and an
especially favourite place of John, whose mark upon the forest trees
growing in that neighbourhood, has been repeatedly found of late years,
in cutting them up for timber.
It was a pleasant region; varied with its hill and dale, fair
lakes,--some of which yet remain;--rivulets of most beautiful clearness;
woods of noble growth; and the abundant Trent rolling along its southern
side. In it lay Nottingham, Mansfield, Hardwick, Welbeck, Thoresby,
since the birthplace of Lady Mary Wortley Montague; Newstead, the abode
of Lord Byron; Annesley, the heritage of Mary Chaworth, and many another
ample domain. It was governed by a warden, his lieutenant, and a
steward; a bow-bearer, and a ranger; four verderers, twelve regarders,
four agistors, and twelve keepers in the main forest, under the chief
forester, who held it in fee, with liberty to destroy and kill at
pleasure, reserving 100 deer in each walk. There were also several
woodwards for every township within the forest, and one for every
principal wood. It had also five hays, or royal parks, each fenced in,
and furnished with its lodge; and having each a forester, going his
rounds on horseback, with a page; and two foresters on foot without a
page. These hays were Best-wood, Lindby-hay, Welhay, Birkland cum
Bilhay, and Clypstone. “In these hays no man commons,” says the
Inquisition of King Henry III., taken in the thirty-fifth year of his
reign, at St. John’s house in Nottingham. They were especial reserves of
game for the royal use, which was not to be disturbed by the intrusion
of any other men, or their cattle, on any pretence.
Besides these, there were extensive woods and demesnes: Newstead,
Lyndhurst, Welbeck, Rufford, Romewood, Clumber, Kingshaghe, Carburton,
Arnall, Edwinstowe, Mansfield-Woodhouse, Hye Forest, Kyegill, and
Ravenshede, Bulwell Risse, Outhesland (_qy._ the land of Robert
Fitzouth, or Robin Hood’s land?) the barony of Southwell, and others,
full of great woods of oak, many of them 700 years old; thirteen hundred
head of red deer at the very last Inquisition, besides fallow deer
without number.[22] All this is broken up, and dispersed as a dream.
These royal hays and demesnes have been bestowed in grants by different
monarchs: as Newstead by Henry VIII. to Sir John Byron; Bestwood by
Charles II., to the Duke of St. Albans, his son by Nell Gwynn; and so
on, or sold. The great woods have fallen under the axe; and repeated
enclosures have reduced the open forest to that part which formerly went
by the name of the Hye-Forest; a tract of land of about ten miles long,
by three or four wide, extending from the Nottingham road, near
Mansfield west, to Clipstone Park east. This tract is, for the most
part, bare of trees. Near Mansfield there remains a considerable wood,
Harlowe Wood, and a fine scattering of old oaks near Berry-hill, in the
same neighbourhood; but the greater part is now an open waste,
stretching in a succession of low hills, and long winding valleys dark
with heather. A few solitary and battered oaks standing here and there,
the last melancholy remnants of these vast and ancient woods; the
beautiful springs; swift and crystaline brooks; and broad sheets of
water lying abroad amid the dark heath, and haunted by numbers of wild
ducks and the heron, still remain. Nature is not easily deprived of
these; and in summer, when the plover and the lark build there, and send
along those brown dales their merry whistle, or loud cries, and in
autumn when the whole waste bursts into a blaze of crimson beauty with
the blossoming heather, it is still, stripped as it is, a charming place
for a contemplative ride or stroll. Here twenty years ago, Captain
Cartwright might be seen following his hawks, and here still you meet a
few sportsmen, with their fine dogs leaping amongst the long heather and
red fern.
[22] A curious fact is apparent on the face of “A Vewe taken by
special commandment from his Majesty to the Lord Warden of his forest,
of all the Red Deer in this forest, 1616.” The warden was obliged to
maintain 100 head of red deer in each of the twelve walks--1200 in the
whole. In this inquiry there proved to be 1260; but in Annesley, the
property of the Chaworths, and Newstead, the property of the Byrons,
there were only ten deer altogether. These Byrons and Chaworths were
always notorious Nimrods, and suffered none to escape them. In
Papplewick too, the adjoining parish, there were only two! The keepers
indeed affirmed that “some days” there were twenty in Annesley Hills,
and fourteen in Newstead Woods, but they did not appear to the
Commissioners. In another “Vewe,” taken in 1635, though the deer had
increased in other walks, so that the total numbers were 1367, in
Newstead and Annesley there were only 19!
But at the Clipstone extremity of the forest, still remains a remnant of
its ancient woodlands unrifled, except of its deer--a specimen of what
the whole once was, and a specimen of consummate beauty and interest.
Birkland and Bilhaghe taken together form a tract of land extending from
Ollerton, along the side of Thoresby Park, the seat of Earl Manvers, to
Clipstone Park, of about five miles in length, and one or two in
width,--Bilhaghe is a forest of oaks; and is clothed with the most
impressive aspect of age that can perhaps be presented to the eye in
these kingdoms. Stonehenge does not give you a feeling of greater eld,
because it is not composed of a material so easily acted on by the
elements. But the hand of time has been on these woods, and has stamped
upon them a most imposing character. I cannot imagine a traveller coming
upon this spot without being startled, and asking himself--“what have we
got here?” It is the blasted and battered ruin of a forest. A thousand
years, ten thousand tempests, lightnings, winds, and wintry violence,
have all flung their utmost force on these trees, and there they stand,
trunk after trunk, scathed, hollow, grey, gnarled; stretching out their
bare, sturdy arms, or their mingled foliage and ruin--a life in death.
All is grey and old. The ground is grey beneath, the trees are grey with
clinging lichens, the very heather and fern that spring beneath them
have a character of the past. If you turn aside, and step amongst them,
your feet sink in a depth of moss and dry vegetation that is the growth
of ages, or rather that ages have not been able to destroy. You stand
and look round, and in the height of summer, all is silent; it is like
the fragment of a world worn out and forsaken. These were the trees
under which King John pursued the red deer 600 years ago. These were the
oaks beneath which Robin Hood led up his bold band of outlaws. These are
the oaks which have stood while king after king reigned; while the
Edwards and Henrys subdued Ireland, and ravaged Scotland and France;
while all Europe was seeking to rescue Jerusalem from the Saracens;
while the wars of York and Lancaster deluged the soil of all this
kingdom with blood; while Henry VIII. overthrew popery, wives,
ministers, and martyrs with one strong, ruthless hand; while Elizabeth,
with an equal hand of unshrinking might and decision, made all Europe
tremble at a woman’s name, and stand astonished at a woman’s jealousy,
when she butchered her cousin, the Queen of Scots. Here they stood,
while the monarchy of England fell to the ground before Cromwell and the
Covenanters; while Charles II., restored to his realm, but not to
wisdom, revelled; while under a new dynasty, the fortunes of England
have been urging through good and evil their course to a splendour and
dominion strangely mingled with suffering and disquiet, yet giving
prospect of a Christian glory beyond all precedent and conception.
Through all this these trees have here stood silently--and here they
are! monuments of ages that cannot be seen without raising in our souls
remembrance of all these mighty things. To the contemplative mind they
are inscribed all over with characters of strange power. They shew us at
a glance, and with a palpableness which few things besides possess, how
far the day of their first growth is past by; how far the ages of
feudalism and civilization lie asunder. All around them, instead of that
ocean of woods, heaths and morasses, come crowding up green fields, and
the boundary-marks of free men; and if we were to see a hoary pilgrim
suddenly make his appearance on the pavé of a great modern town, propped
on his long staff, and belted in his grey robe, with his sandal-shoon
and scallop-shell, we should not feel more strongly the discrepancy of
life and character between him and the spruce population around him,
than between these hoary and doddered oaks and the cultured country
which hems them in.
But Bilhaghe is only the half of the forest-remains here: in a
continuous line with it lies Birkland--a tract which bears its character
in its name--the land of Birches! It is a forest perfectly unique. It is
equally ancient with Bilhaghe, but it has a less dilapidated air. There
are old and mighty oaks scattered through it, ay, some of them worn down
to the very ultimatum of ruin, without leaf or bough, standing huge
masses of blackness; but the birches, of which the main portion of the
forest consists, cannot boast the longevity of oaks. Their predecessors
have perished over and over, and they, though noble and unrivalled of
their kind, are infants compared with the oaken trunks which stand
amongst them. Birkland! it is a region of grace and poetry! I have seen
many a wood, and many a wood of birches, and some of them amazingly
beautiful too, in one quarter or another of this fair island, but in
England nothing that can compare with this. It must be confessed that
the birch woods which clothe the mountain sides, beautify the glens, and
stud the romantic lochs of Scotland, derive a charm from the lovely and
sublime forms of those mountains, glens, and waters, which is not to be
expected in this lowland country. The birch trees which rear their
silvery stems, tree above tree, on the rocks of the Trosachs; the birch
woods that fill the delicious valleys of Rosshire--which imparadise the
glens and feather the heathery mountain-sides of Glen-More nan
Alpin--the great glen of Scotland, traversed by the Caledonian
Canal--thousands of summer tourists can testify with me are lovely
beyond description; but Birkland has some advantages which they have
not. Its trees have reached a size that the northern ones have not; and
the peculiar mixture of their lady-like grace with the stern and ample
forms of these feudal oaks, produces an effect most fairylandish and
unrivalled.
Advance up this long avenue, which the noble owner of this forest tract
has cut through it, and looking right and left as you proceed, you shall
not be able long to refrain from turning into the tempting openings that
ever and anon present themselves. Enter which you please,--you cannot be
wrong. You may wander for hours, and still find fresh aspects of
woodland beauty. These winding tracks, just wide enough for a couple of
people on horseback, or in a pony-phaeton to advance along, carpeted
with a mossy turf that springs under your feet with a delicious
elasticity, and closed in with shadowy trunks and flowery thickets--are
they not lovely? And then you come to some sudden opening, where the
long pensile branches of the birches, and the sweeping masses of oaken
boughs surround and shut you in with a delectable solitude, where you
may lie on the warm turf and read, or listen to the whispering leaves or
the solemn sough of the forest; or a merry party of you may laugh and
talk to your hearts’ content, glad as the blue sky above you; and vow
that you will come and pitch your tents here for a fortnight,--a jocund
company, like Shakspeare’s immortal troop in the forest of Arden. There
never was scenery to realize more perfectly our idea of that forest. But
go on: you enter on a wider expanse, on which a glorious oak stretches
out its vast circumference of boughs that droop to the very ground, and
form an ample tent, whose waving curtains fan you with the most grateful
air. Here you come upon the solitary foot-path that crosses the forest.
You hear the light clap of a gate, and presently beneath the glimpsing
trees, you see some rustic personage pursuing this path, and going
unconsciously past you as you stand amongst the thickets--some old man
with heavy pace, or village girl hurrying along as if those woods were
still haunted by dubious things. But advance, and here is a wide
prospect. The woodmen have cleared away the underwood; they have felled
trees that were overtopped and ruined by their fellows; and their
billets and fallen trunks, and split-up piles of blocks, are lying about
in pictorial simplicity. On all sides, standing in their solemn
steadfastness, you see huge, gnarled, strangely-coloured, and mossed
oaks, some riven and laid bare, from summit to root, with the
thunderbolts of past tempests. An immense tree is called the
Shamble-Oak, being said to be the one in which Robin Hood hung his
slaughtered deer; but which was more probably used by the keepers for
that purpose. By whomsoever it was so used, however, there still remain
the hooks within its vast hollow. The old birches, without doubt some of
the largest in England, shew like true satyrs of the woods--to the
height of a man, being shagged, indented, and cross-hatched, as it were,
into a most satyrly roughness, and contrast well with the higher bole,
which rises clear and shining as silver to the boughs, which sweep down
again to the ground in graceful lightness.
There is no end to the variety of their aspect and grouping. From the
sylvan loveliness around you, you might fancy yourself in the outer
wilderness of some Armida’s garden. In spring, these woods are all alive
with the cawing of jackdaws, which build in thousands in the hollow
oaks; and as their bustle ceases as the evening falls, the nightingales
are heard, and the owl and the dorhawk come soaring through the dusky
air.
It is just the region to grow poetical in. I never walk these woods
without forgetting for the time all the cares of towns and common life.
It is to me a palpable introduction into the old world of poetry and
romance. There is a spirit and feeling of the intellectual world that
falls on you as the peculiar spirit of the place. It seems to me that if
Milton, Shakspeare, Spenser, and all those noble poets whose minds have
moulded the better mind and character of this great country, were to
revisit it at times, when they had looked round them on the agitations
of city-life, to some such place would they come awhile to refresh
themselves with their old delights, and to hold high converse on the
present fashion and prospects of humanity. Nothing seems so natural to
these scenes, as to imagine their presence thus joined with the kindred
spirits of a later day--Scott, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Hogg, and the
like;--their religion, their passions, their doubts, their philosophical
mysticism all now blended down into a heavenly nobility and union of
heart and desire; their favourite fancies and pursuits still dear to
them as ever, but their intellectual vision widened to the embracement
of the universe. I seem to see Shelley and Keats going hand in hand
along some fair glade; the one pouring out all that soul of love which
possessed him, which he wished had been the foundation of the Christian
religion instead of faith, and who yet, blinded by the impetuosity of
youth and indignation against the despotism of priestcraft, failed to
see that this same love was the very life and glory of that system;--the
other young poet still uttering aloud his longings for time! time! in
which to achieve an eternity of fame:--
Oh! for ten years, that I may do the deed
That my own soul has to itself decreed!
Or Lamb, speaking to those old friends of his earthly sojourn, of some
fair creature met in the valleys of heaven:
She loves to walk
In the bright regions of empyreal light,
By the green pastures and the fragrant meads,
Where the perpetual flowers of Eden blow!
By crystal streams, and by the living waters,
Along whose margin grows the wondrous tree
Whose leaves shall heal the nations; underneath
Whose holy shade a refuge shall be found
From pain and want, and all the ills that wait
On mortal life, from sin and death for ever.
But away, spirit of the woods! Time urges; the world calls: and we are
thrown once more into the midst of the stirring, rushing, unceasing
stream of men. These woods and their fairyland dreams are but our
luxuries; snatches of beauty and peace, caught as we go along the dusty
path of duty. The town has engulphed us; a human hum is in our ears; and
the thoughts and the cares of life are upon us once more.
CHAPTER IV.
FOREST ENCLOSURES.
Before I quit this part of my volume, let me say a word on the subject
of forest enclosures. There are certain persons who, from notions of
national benefit, are very desirous that all crown lands should be
disposed of; and all forests and wastes enclosed. As a matter of
national benefit I think them considerably mistaken. For the very
highest purposes of national benefit I desire, and that most earnestly,
to see them kept open. I know the logic regularly employed by these
people;--to make two blades of corn grow where one grew before; to make
all our lands in the highest degree productive of food. Now, if we were
cattle, or sheep, the great end of whose existence it was to graze well
and get fat, then is their reasoning most excellent. But I look upon
humanity as having other wants than mere physical ones. I too would have
all our lands produce us food: but then it should be food of various
kinds; food not only for one part, the corporeal, but for every part of
our nature; and in these forests and open lands the intellectual part of
the nation “have a food that these men know not of.” He who attends to
our mere animal prosperity may call himself an utilitarian, but the true
utilitarian comprehends in his scheme what is good for man in his
integral nature; for his spiritual and intellectual needs, as well as
for his bodily. But taking them on their own ground, these forest lands
are not mere unproductive wastes. They supply our dockyards with an
abundance of valuable timber; in them lie farms, and cottage homes,
with their orchards, gardens, and little enclosures. They maintain a
large population, and they pasture a vast quantity of cattle, sheep,
hogs, and horses. Take even such a tract as that of Dartmoor, now
stripped of its trees. There cattle and sheep run in great numbers; and
there lies about in inexhaustible quantities, granite, which supplies
labour in shaping it, and conveying it away, to a large body of men, and
goes forth to build our public works and adorn our metropolis. And there
too the mines employ, again, numerous people, and send up large
quantities of valuable metal. And what should we gain by an enclosure?
We should gain a greater supply of corn, which the farmers and landlords
sometimes find they have actually too much of.[23] Having hedged about
the kingdom with enactments to prevent the free importation of grain,
they ever and anon find that they grow so much of it that they cannot
really get a remunerating price for it. But even if we did want it, we
have only to throw open our ports, and have as much as we want, at
almost any price, and cattle too, which we could give our manufactures
in exchange for. This is all that the most sanguine advocates of
universal enclosure pretend that we should gain; and then let us see
what we should lose by it. In the first place, these lands would go to
swell the rentals of the rich, as all others enclosed have done. The
enclosure system has been one of unexampled absurdity and injustice. It
has been conducted on the principle of--“Unto him that hath shall be
given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he
hath.” Unto him who could shew that he had land lying in proximity to
the waste about to be enclosed, has been given more, in the exact
proportion to the quantity which he had. The more he had, the more was
given him; and from him that had none, was taken away that which he
had--the custom of commoning his beasts on the waste. One would
naturally have supposed that in a _christian_ country there would have
been a desire to provide for those who had nothing. That in every parish
the waste land should have been, if allotted at all to the inhabitants,
allotted to those who had most need of it. The rule has always been
exactly the reverse; and the consequence has been that our poor
population, stripped of their old common rights, have been thrown upon
the parish; their little flock of sheep, their few cows, their geese,
their pigs, all gone; and no collateral help left them to eke out their
small earnings; and in case of loss of work, or sickness, no resource
but parish degradation;--the consequent evil influence upon the
character of the rural population has been enormous. They have a sense
of injustice, if they have not the power to resist it; and when they see
a system of this kind, they say--“much will have more,” and their
spirits are none the better for the feeling that accompanies the
melancholy truth. Now, the same system would assuredly be continued,
where common allotments took place; and in the sale of crown lands, a
few great persons would purchase them; a few farmers would live and pay
high rents, where hundreds of comfortable cottagers now live, who would
then be added to the list of paupers.
[23] They did so especially in 1834 and 1835; when wheat was only
38_s._ and 40_s._ per quarter.
But it is not merely the poor that would lose by it. The miner, the
artist, the naturalist, the poet, the antiquarian, the lover of the
country, and the frequenter of it for health or relaxation, all would
suffer most seriously by it, and the country would suffer with them. In
the wastes of Devon and Cornwall, in those of Derbyshire, Warwickshire,
and Northumberland, the subterranean mass is worth, in many places, a
hundred times the surface. Enclose and cover up with cultivation these
wastes, and you bury by millions the wealth of the nation, and the bread
of the miners. At present, they lie open to the foot and the eye of the
scrutinizing and adventurous. They can traverse heaths and mountains,
and amid the barely covered rocks beneath them, or in the precipices
that tower above them, they can at leisure hunt out and discover the
sparkling vein, or the dull and secret ore; and open up a fountain of
labour and affluence that may run for ages. But enclose these wild
regions; warn off the curious inquirers with boards threatening
“prosecution as the law directs,” or as may now be seen on the premises
of an old lady in Surrey--that “anybody trespassing will be shot at
without farther notice!”--keep them out with fences, and cover up the
surface with accumulating soil and manure, and there may the riches of
Providence remain buried for ever. With the researches of the miner, you
restrict those of the geologist too. With the naturalist it fares the
same. Every spadegraft of your cultivation annihilates the habitats and
localities of animals, insects, and plants, which can exist only in the
unploughed wilderness. You destroy some of the most curious natural
productions of your country for ever, and circumscribe some of the most
healthful, heart-purifying, and spirit-cheering pursuits of men. Your
ploughs and mattocks pierce through and erase immediately the earthy
mounds, the circles, the stone vestiges of far-past ages, and with them
the pleasant journeys and inspiring speculations of antiquarians; as
well as a great portion of the historic light and evidences of the
nation. If you could root out the New Forest, you might possibly get as
well supplied with timber from some other quarter, but where would you
find the landscape painter such a treasury of sylvan and picturesque
beauty, such delicious nooks and hollows, and fair streams winding under
forest boughs? Where such groupings and endless variety of foliage and
forest stems? Where such lights and shades and colours as nature there
diffuses over her own regions in the everlasting circulation of the
seasons; and all within six or seven hours’ ride of the metropolis?[24]
I should like to know where you will find him substitutes for the naked,
waste, but glorious expanses of the Surrey heaths, of Dartmoor,
Stainmore, the high moors of Derbyshire, those of Northumberland,
Lancashire, or of Scotland--that land which has often been called poor,
but which from the influence of its wild and magnificent scenery is
continually pouring out a wealth of genius that is miraculous? Thank
God; they never can pull down its mountains, and reduce them to the dead
level, and quadrangular fields of cultivation; and into their fairyland
recesses there will always be a retreat from the engrossing, engulphing
spirit of mercantile calculation.
[24] By the Southampton Railway, now brought within about three hours’
journey of London.
But I am passing from painting to poetry; and yet, one is so blended
with the other that I would ask the shrewdest person living to shew me
where they totally separate. Where then, I ask, will they find
substitutes for the painter, for our wild and desolate moors? There the
very air in its elastic freshness is full of health and inspiration to
him. There he draws an indemnity for his constitution from the deadly
effects of long and close confinement in cities and painting rooms.
There every turf is covered with a rude beauty to his eyes; there every
rock and stone is piled in bold and inimitable shapes of savage grandeur
by the spirit of nature for him; and the winds, and rains, and
vegetative powers of centuries have been busy tinging them with the hues
of his admiration. There, amid the sound of falling waters and the roar
of coming tempests, he feels all his faculties called into power and
life within him, and brings home, season after season, scenes that cover
the walls of our city homes with a wild magnificence. Enclose these
tracts; hem them in with walls and hedges, and he will no longer visit
them. You will no longer find him sitting on some moorland stone,
watching the stream which hurries with sea-like sound along its craggy
bed; or gazing on those rocky banks and long lines of trees that
overhang it, and mark its course along the desert. He will no longer fix
the solitary labourer, or the passing group, in their own peculiar
character, nor paint the lurid gloom of the storm as it comes with a
frown and a thunder of rains and winds only known in such shelterless
regions. And when you banish him, you banish the poet, and the lovers of
poets too. It is on our moors and our mountains that the profoundest
spirit of poetry dwells. There is an influence felt there, which has
more than half created our Shakspeares, Miltons, Spensers, Wordsworths,
Scotts, Coleridges, Shelleys, and other high spirits that have striven
to elevate the English mind above the mere ordinary enjoyments of life.
And is it true that any one ever felt the full charm of the works of
Scott, who was not familiar with heaths and mountains? Did any one ever
feel all the beauty of the opening of Ivanhoe who had not often lingered
in our forests? Has any one a true conception of “As you like it,” of
“Macbeth,” or of “The Midsummer Night’s Dream,” of “The Fairy Queen,” or
of many another divine creation of the British Muse, who is not
conversant with the free, beautiful, and untamed nature by whose
influence they are shaped? It is one of the great offices of the poet to
keep alive the love of nature; and it is, again, by a corresponding love
of nature that they must be comprehended and relished. The more you
reduce our whole island to a uniformity of colour and cultivation, the
more effectually you extinguish this great action and reaction, which
are health to the spirituality of the public mind.
We are now arrived at a crisis in which we can afford a few forests and
moors to lie open; but we cannot afford to have our higher tastes and
feeling deprived of their legitimate aliment. Shut us up in towns, or
within an eternal continuity of hedges and ditches, and we shall cease
to be the high-souled people we are. We shall become the drudges of
selfish interests, or the victims of false taste. We must have some
openness, some freedom, some breathing places left us. As Abernethy
said, that the parks of London were its lungs; so our mountains,
forests, and moorlands, are the lungs of the whole country. It is there
that we rush away from counting-houses, factories, steam-engines,
railroads, politics, and sectarian factions, and breathe for a season
the air of physical and mental vigour; and feel the peace of nature; and
drink in from all things around us a new life, a new feeling, full of
the benevolent calm which is shed by its Creator over the world. Scott
said he must see the heather at least once a year, or he should die.
Crabbe mounted his horse in a passion of desire which could no longer be
resisted, and rode fifty miles to see the sea; and more or less of this
feeling lies in every bosom that is not totally dead to the true objects
of life. The failing in health; the over-worn in spirit; the followers
of a summer’s recreation, all seek our hills and sea-coasts, and plains,
where the peace or magnificence of nature, or where some celebrated
monument of the past is to be found. If any one would know the extent of
this delight in such things, or the numbers who indulge in it, let him
go, as I have elsewhere said, to any such place in this kingdom, on any
day through the summer and autumn. If we had the amount of the numbers
who make a summer excursion to the sea-side, or to our moorland and
mountain districts, it would be amazing. The parties who swarm along our
Derbyshire valleys, and in every nook of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and
the Western Isles, are apparently without end.
Now this is a very healthful taste, and one, that with all our trading,
manufacturing, and money-getting habits, we cannot too much encourage.
We complain of our countrymen seeking pleasure so much abroad, and shall
we diminish the objects of popular attraction at home? No, there never
was an age in which our forests and moorlands were of half the value
they are of to us now. As true utilitarians, we have the strongest
motives to keep them open, as we mean to keep alive the fine arts,
poetry, the love of antiquity, and the love of nature amongst us; as we
would retain and invigorate in us that higher life by which we have
climbed to our present national altitude; by which our sages and poets
have been nourished, and become the true teachers and inspirers of
virtue and nobility to the world; by which we are made to feel our
animal life even with a double zest; and are yet, I trust, destined to
make the name of England the greatest in the history of the world.
I do not mean to say that no waste lands should be henceforth enclosed.
There are plenty, every one knows, that have no particular grace or
interest about them. Let them, in the name of all that is reasonable, be
hedged and ditched as soon as you please; but as for the village green,
the common lying near a town, the forest, and the moorland that has a
poetical charm about it, felt and acknowledged by the public--may the
axe and the spade that are lifted up against them be shivered to atoms,
and a curse, worse than the curse of Kehama, chase all commissioners,
land-surveyors, petitioning lawyers, and every species of fencer and
divider out of their boundaries for ever and ever.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V.
WILD ENGLISH CATTLE.
We have a few herds of the original cattle which once abounded in
England and Scotland, still remaining. We have long ago destroyed our
wolves, bears, and boars; and it seems almost a miracle that a few of
these inhabitants of our ancient forests have been preserved. They form
the most interesting objects of those parts of the country where they
exist. Every one knows the use Scott has made of them in the Bride of
Lammermuir. There was formerly a fine herd of them at Drumlanrig in
Scotland. In England they were to be found at Burton-Constable in
Yorkshire; Wollaton near Nottingham; Gisburne in Craven; Lime-Hall in
Cheshire; Chartley Castle in Staffordshire; and Chillingham Castle in
Northumberland. That they were of the true old breed was sufficiently
testified by their common resemblance; being universally milk-white;
having only the tips of their horns, and their muzzles and ears
coloured. The only difference was, that in some herds, the tips and the
whole of the inside of the ears, were black, in others red or brown.
What may be the numbers remaining at Lime or Gisburne, I do not know. At
Wollaton they have become mixed with the common breed; but at Chartley
there are about twenty of them, where they retain their ancient
characteristics, and their wildness. Here, there are sundry
superstitions connected with them. It is believed and asserted, that if
they amount to more than a certain number, or if a calf of an unusual
colour is produced, some calamity happens in the family of the noble
owner, Earl Ferrers. This, it is asserted, was the case when one of the
earls was executed; and indeed, that every family calamity has been thus
prognosticated.
The noblest herd is to be found at Chillingham Castle, on the
Northumbrian borders, the seat of the Earl of Tankerville. The park is
well calculated for the use of such animals. It lies in a solitary
country. Care seems taken to render the isolation as complete as
possible;--there is not even a public-house permitted by his lordship in
the small hamlet, which seems to exist just as the ancient, dependent
hamlet of the feudal castle did in the feudal times themselves. The
castle, a fine fabric, in true castellated style, and well befitting the
classic land of Northumberland--the region of Alnwick, Warkworth, and
Chevy-Chace--of the skirmishes of Douglas and Percy--of many an ancient
cross, convent, battle-stone, and hermit-cell, lies embosomed in its
woods at the foot of wild hills, which ascend eastward for a mile or
more, and terminate in a range of bare and craggy eminences of a fine
woodland character. This steep slope between the castle and these
heights is the park. Various woods and deep dells are scattered over it,
so that the cattle can choose a high and airy pasture between them,
where they see afar off any approach--a situation they seem particularly
to enjoy; or can, at the slightest alarm, plunge into the depth of woods
and glens.
Bewick, who visited them, has given capital portraits of this
interesting race of cattle, and the following passages from his account
of them are marked by his usual accuracy. “At the first appearance of
any person, they set off in full gallop, and at the distance of two or
three hundred yards make a wheel round, and come boldly up again,
tossing their heads in a menacing manner. On a sudden they make a full
stop at the distance of forty or fifty yards, looking wildly at the
objects of their surprise; but on the least motion being made, they all
again turn round, and run off with equal speed, but not to the same
distance: forming a shorter circle, and again returning with a bolder
and more threatening aspect than before, they approach much nearer,
probably within thirty yards; when they make another stand, and again
run off. This they do several times, shortening their distance, and
advancing nearer, till they come within ten yards; when most people
think it prudent to leave them, not choosing to provoke them further;
for there is little doubt but in two or three times more they would make
an attack.
“The mode of killing them was, perhaps, the only modern remains of the
grandeur of ancient hunting. On notice being given that a wild bull
would be killed on a certain day, the inhabitants of the neighbourhood
came mounted and armed with guns, etc., sometimes to the amount of a
hundred horse, and four or five hundred foot, who stood upon walls or
got into trees, while the horsemen rode out the bull from the rest of
the herd, until he stood at bay; when a marksman dismounted and shot. At
some of these huntings twenty or thirty of these shots have been fired
before he was subdued. On such occasions the bleeding victim grew
desperately furious, from the smarting of his wounds, and the shouts of
savage joy that were echoing from every side; but, from the number of
accidents that happened, this dangerous mode has been little practised
of late years; the park-keeper alone generally shooting them with a
rifled gun, at one shot.
“When the cows calve, they hide their calves for a week or ten days, in
some sequestered situation, and go and suckle them two or three times
a-day. If any person come near the calves, they clap their heads close
to the ground, and lie like a hare in form to hide themselves. This is a
proof of their native wildness, and is corroborated by the following
circumstance, that happened to the writer of this narrative, who found a
hidden calf of two days old, very lean and very weak. On stroking its
head, it got up, pawed two or three times like an old bull, bellowed
very loud, stepped back a few steps, and bolted at his legs with all his
force. It then began to paw again, bellowed, stepped back, and bolted as
before; but knowing its intention, he stepped aside, and it missed him,
fell, and was so very weak, that it could not rise, though it made
several efforts. But it had done enough: the whole herd was alarmed, and
coming to its rescue, obliged him to retire; for the dams will allow no
person to touch their calves, without attacking them with impetuous
ferocity.
“When any one happens to be wounded, or is grown feeble through age or
sickness, the rest of the herd set upon it and gore it to death.
“The weight of the bulls is generally from forty to fifty stone the four
quarters; of the cows about thirty. The beef is finely marbled, and of
excellent flavour.”
We visited the park in 1836, and were at great pains to get a sight of
this noble herd. We were told that the keeper was in the park and would
get us a view of it; but on going into it, we found him, and some others
of the household busily engaged in shooting fawns. For this purpose some
men on horseback were galloping round a herd of deer, and driving them
in a particular direction, where a keeper lay in ambush, near a narrow
opening between the woods, and when they came near enough, shot with his
rifle such fawns as he wanted. It was a scene of great animation: the
galloping men--the keeper seen cautiously peeping out, to watch for the
approach of the herd--the herd here collected into a dense group, in
watchfulness and alarm--and again streaming off in a long line across
the park, in some direction which seemed most to promise escape. The
cries of the old--the shriller cries of the young--the sudden flash and
report from the thicket--the fall of the fawn--and the flying of the
herd in some other direction, made up a lively though painful scene.
But this spoiled our peculiar sport. The wild cattle, accustomed to be
fired at themselves occasionally, alarmed at the sound of the guns, had
retired to the most obscure woodland retreats of the park. Several
persons told us that they had seen the whole herd a few minutes before,
in the highest part of the park; but we traversed the woods in every
direction, and penetrated into their darkest recesses without getting a
glimpse of them. This we did for a couple of hours, and spite of the
warnings of those who were well acquainted with them, so great was my
anxiety to have a view of these fine animals. Two sawyers, who were
sawing timber at a pit up in a glade of the park, told us that a few
mornings before, on coming to their work, they found several bulls in
the glade, which began to shake their heads, and tear up the ground in a
style which induced them to betake themselves to the wood as nimbly as
possible. We were told too, that Mr. Landseer, while sketching some of
these cattle, found it advisable to retreat more than once; and that
people are not only frequently pursued, but that one man had been killed
by them the previous summer. However, trusting to my ability to mount a
tree, in case of need, I determined to hold on till I found them; and
having thus gone through all the woods but one, not excepting Robin
Hood’s Cleuch, for Robin has a traditionary retreat in many a place of
the north. I was certain they must be there, and therefore gave way to
the remonstrances of wiser heads, and retired to a distance to watch
their issuing forth. The firing of the guns in the lower part of the
park had ceased, and we were assured that the cattle would not be long
before they made their appearance. And sure enough, in about half an
hour, this grand herd of wild cattle came streaming out of this very
wood. There were upwards of a hundred of them; and they spread
themselves at equal distances across the steep glade, between this and
the next wood, and commenced a steady graze, ever and anon lifting up a
cautious head, to ascertain the actual absence of danger. It was a sight
well worthy of a long journey to see. Their number, their uniformity of
colour and shape, the wild shy look of the cows, the sturdy strength of
the bulls--some of them of a large size--and their clear snowy hue,
which made them conspicuous for many miles distant, as we occasionally
turned, on our way over the moors to Wooller, and saw them still grazing
in the very same spot and order. They reminded us of the herds of the
sun, amongst which Ulysses’ hungry crew made such havoc in the meads of
Trinacria.
We were told that the hunting of the bulls had been renewed by Lord
Ossulston, the eldest son of the Earl of Tankerville, with whom it was a
very favourite pursuit--certainly the grandest species of chase yet
left in Britain, and the only one which the sense of danger incurred can
heighten and ennoble to anything like the same level as that of hunting
the tiger in India, or the bear in the northern countries of Europe. It
seems, as well he may, that the Earl is proud of this fine herd of
cattle, and, it is said, refuses on any terms to furnish any of his
noble neighbours with a pair of them to stock their parks similarly. It
is to be hoped that this interesting remnant of the native herd will
long be preserved in its present magnificent number and purity of breed.
At the Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science
at Newcastle, in August 1838, a paper was read on these wild cattle by
Mr. L. Hindmarsh. The only additional facts respecting them were
contained in a letter of Lord Tankerville to the writer. His lordship
stated that nothing had for generations been known of the origin of
these cattle in his family; and that they were mentioned in no family
document. That there was great probability of their location there being
very ancient. He describes them, as we found them, retiring into the
woods on any alarm, and having a faculty of traversing the woods so
quietly that it is difficult to obtain a sight of them. He states that
he himself has not been able in summer time to get a sight of them for
weeks together. That on the contrary, in winter time, being fed in the
inner park, they become pretty familiar, and will let you go near them,
especially when on horseback. His lordship describes them as very
uncertain in their disposition, sometimes struck with sudden panics, and
at others very fierce. “When they come down into the lower part of the
park, which they do at stated hours, they move like a regiment of
cavalry in single files, the bulls leading the van, or in retreat it is
the bulls which bring up the rear. Lord Ossulston was witness to a
curious way in which they took possession, as it were, of some new
pasture recently laid open to them. It was in the evening about sunset.
They began by lining the front of a small wood, which seemed quite alive
with them, when all of a sudden, they made a dart forward altogether in
a line, and charging close by him across the plain, they spread out, and
after a little time began feeding.” His lordship says, “Many stories
might be told of hair-breadth escapes, accidents of sundry kinds from
these cattle,” and gives an instance of a bull attacking a keeper, whom
he tossed three times, then knelt down on him, breaking several of his
ribs, and would soon have killed him, had not a number of gentlemen from
the castle with rifles succeeded in destroying the furious beast, but
not till they had lodged six or seven bullets in his skull.
PART VI.
HABITS, AMUSEMENTS, AND CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.
CHAPTER I.
COTTAGE LIFE.
What a mighty space lies between the palace and the cottage in this
country! ay, what a mighty space between the mansion of the private
gentleman and the hut of the labourer on his estate! To enter the one:
to see its stateliness and extent; all its offices, outbuildings,
gardens, greenhouses, hothouses; its extensive fruit-walls, and the
people labouring to furnish the table simply with fruit, vegetables, and
flowers; its coach-houses, harness-houses, stables, and all the steeds,
draught-horses, and saddle-horses, hunters, and ladies’ pads, ponies for
ladies’ airing-carriages, and ponies for children; and all the grooms
and attendants thereon; to see the waters for fish, the woods for game,
the elegant dairy for the supply of milk and cream, curds and butter,
and the dairymaids and managers belonging to them;--and then, to enter
the house itself, and see all its different suites of apartments,
drawing-rooms, boudoirs, sleeping-rooms, dining and breakfast rooms; its
steward’s, housekeeper’s and butler’s rooms; its ample kitchens and
larders, with their stores of provisions, fresh and dried; its stores
of costly plate, porcelain and crockery apparatus of a hundred kinds;
its cellars of wine and strong beer; its stores of linen; its library of
books; its collections of paintings, engravings, and statuary; the
jewels, musical instruments, and expensive and interminable
nick-knackery of the ladies; the guns and dogs; the cross-bows,
long-bows, nets, and other implements of amusement of the gentlemen; all
the rich carpeting and fittings-up of day-rooms, and night-rooms, with
every contrivance and luxury which a most ingenious and luxurious age
can furnish; and all the troops of servants, male and female, having
their own exclusive offices, to wait upon the person of lady or
gentleman, upon table, or carriage, or upon some one ministration of
pleasure or necessity: I say, to see all this, and then to enter the
cottage of a labourer, we must certainly think that one has too much for
the insurance of comfort, or the other must have extremely too little.
If the peasant can be satisfied with his establishment, and the
gentleman could not tell how to live without his, one would be almost
persuaded that they could not be of the same class of animals. Knowing,
however, that they are of the same species, it only shews of what
elastic stuff human nature is made; into what a nutshell it can compress
its cravings, and how immensely it can expand itself when the pressure
of necessity is withdrawn. I am not going here to moot the old question
of whereabout happiness lies in this strange disparity of circumstance;
it, no doubt, lies somewhere between the extremes. It certainly cannot
be created by external superfluities. _They_ lay open their possessors
to the exercise of despotic power; to the corruptions of pride and
luxury; to false taste, frivolous pursuits, and the diffusion of the
attention over so many objects as to prevent the heart from settling
firmly on any. They have a tendency to weaken the domestic attachments,
and the love of solid pursuits. On the other hand, the pressure of
poverty and ignorance certainly can, and too often does, lie so heavily
as to destroy the relish of life’s enjoyments in the cottager. Yet
happiness is a fireside thing; and the simplicity of cottage life, the
fewness of its objects, and the strong sympathies awakened by its trials
and sufferings, tend to condense the affections, and to strike deep the
roots of happiness in the sacred soil of consanguinity. When wealth is
accompanied by a desire to do good, it is a glorious and a happy
destiny; when lowly life is virtuous, easy, and enlightened, it is a
happy destiny too--for it is full of the strong zest of existence, and
strong affections. But this is not my present subject.
When we go into the cottage of the working man, how forcibly are we
struck with the difference between his mode of life and our own. There
is his tenement of, at most, one or two rooms. His naked walls; bare
brick, stone or mud floor, as it may be: a few wooden, or rush-bottomed
chairs; a deal, or old oak table; a simple fireplace, with its oven
beside it, or, in many parts of the kingdom, no other fireplace than the
hearth; a few pots and pans--and you have his whole abode, goods and
chattels. He comes home weary from his out-door work, having eaten his
dinner under hedge or tree, and seats himself for a few hours with his
wife and children, then turns into a rude bed, standing perhaps on the
farther side of his only room, and out again before daylight, if it be
winter. He has no one to make a fire in his dressing-room, to lay out
his clothes, to assist him in his toilet; he flings on his patched
garments, washes his face in a wooden or earthen dish at the door; blows
up the fire, often gets ready his own breakfast, and is gone.
Such is the routine of his life, from week to week and year to year;
Sundays, and a few holidays, are white days in his calendar. On them he
shaves, and puts on a clean shirt and better coat, drawn from that old
chest which contains the whole wardrobe of himself and children; his
wife has generally some separate drawer or bandbox, in which to stow her
lighter and more fragile gear. Then he walks round his little garden, if
he have it; goes with his wife and children to church or meeting; to sit
with a neighbour, or have a neighbour look in upon him. There he sits,
his children upon his knee, and tells them how his father used to talk
to _him_.
This is cottage life in its best estate; in its unsophisticated and
unpauperised condition. He has no carriages, no horses, no cards of
invitation, or of admittance to places of amusement; none of the
luxuries, fascinations, or embellishments of life belong to him. It is
existence shorn of all its spreading and flowering branches, but not
pared to the quick. This is supposing the father of the family is sober
and industrious;--that he is neither a pot-house haunter, a gambler at
the cockpit, a boxer, a dog-fighter, a poacher, an idle, rackety and
demoralized fellow, as thousands are. This is supposing that he brings
home his week’s wages, and puts them into the hands of his wife, as
their best guardian and distributer;--saying,--“Here, my lass, this is
all that I have earned; thou must lay it out for the best; _I_ have
enough to do to win it.”
And what are these wages, out of which to maintain his family, aided by
the lesser earnings of his wife, by taking in washing, helping in
harvest-fields, charring in more affluent people’s houses, and so on,
and the earnings of the children in similar ways, or in some
neighbouring factory? His own probably amount to nine, or, at most,
twelve shillings, and if his family be large, and there are several
workers among them, the whole united earnings may reach twenty shillings
per week; a sum which will hardly find other men wherewith to pay
toll-bars, or purchase gunpowder; a sum which we throw away repeatedly
on some bauble; and yet, on this will a whole family maintain life and
credit for a week, ay, and on much less too. In this little hut, which
we should hardly think would do for a cowshed or a hayloft, and to which
the stables of many gentlemen are real palaces, is the poor man packed
with all his kindred lives, interests, and affections: and so he carries
on the warfare of humanity, till He, who is no respecter of persons,
calls him to stand, side by side, before his throne with the rich man
who “has fared sumptuously every day.”
Such are “the short and simple annals” of thousands and tens of
thousands in these kingdoms; and yet what fine strapping young fellows
spring up in these little cabins, men who have tilled the soil of
England and wielded at home her mechanic tools, and borne her arms
abroad, till their industry and genius, under the direction of higher
minds, have raised her to her present pitch of eminence; and what sweet
faces and lovely forms issue thence to Sunday worship, to village feast
and dance; or are seen by the evening passer-by in the light of the
ingle, amid the family group, making some smoky-raftered hut a little
temple of rare beauty, and of filial or sisterly affections. I often
thank God that the poor have their objects of admiration and attraction;
their domestic affections and their family ties, out of which spring a
thousand simple and substantial pleasures; that beauty and ability are
not the exclusive growth of hall and palace; and that, in this country
at least, the hand of arbitrary power dare seldom enter this charmed
circle, and tear asunder husband from wife, parent from children,
brother from sister, as it does in the lands of slavery. Yet our New
Poor Laws have aimed a deadly blow at this blessed security; and, till
the sound feeling of the nation shall have again disarmed them of this
fearful authority, every poor man’s family is liable, on the occurrence
of some chance stroke of destitution, to have to their misfortune,
bitter enough in itself, added the tenfold aggravation of being torn
asunder, and immured in the separate wards of a POVERTY PRISON. The very
supposition is horrible; and, if this system, this iron and
indiscriminating system,--a blind tyranny, knowing no difference between
accidental misfortune and habitual idleness, between worthy poverty and
audacious imposition, between misfortune and crime,--be the product of
Philanthropy, may Philanthropy be sunk to the bottom of the sea!
But the cottage life I have been speaking of, is that of the better
class of cottagers; the sober and industrious peasantry: but how far
short of this condition is that of millions in this empire! To say
nothing of Irish cabins, the examples of what a state of destitution,
misery, and squalor men may sink into; how much below this is the
comfort of a Highland hut? What a contrast is there often between the
cottage of an English labourer, and the _steading_ of a Highland farmer.
There it stands, in a deep glen, between high, rocky mountains. His farm
is a wild sheep-track among the hills. Wheat, he grows none, for it is
too cold and weeping a climate. He has a little patch of oats for
crowdie and oatcake; potatoes he has, if the torrent has not risen
during sudden rains so high in the glen as to sweep his crop away. He
has contrived a little stock of hay for his cows, but where it can have
grown you cannot conceive, till some day, as you see a woman or a boy
herding the cattle amongst the patches of cultivation--for there are no
fences between the grass and arable land--you find one or the other
cutting the longer grass from the boggy waste with a sickle, and drying
it often in little sheaves as our farmers dry corn. But the house
itself;--it is a little, low, long building of mud, or rough stones; the
chimney composed of four short poles wrapped round with hay-bands; a
flat stone laid upon it to prevent the smoke being driven down into the
hut by the tempestuous winds from the hills; and another stone laid upon
that, to keep it from being blown away. The roof is thatched with
bracken, with the roots outermost; or often the same roof is a patchwork
of bracken, ling, broom, and turf. A little window of perhaps one pane
of thick glass, or of four of oiled paper. The door, which reaches to
the eaves, is so low that you must stoop to enter; and the smoke is
pouring out of it faster than it ascends from the chimney. A few goats
are, most likely, lying or standing about the door. You enter, and as
soon as you can discern anything through the eternal cloud of smoke, you
most probably find yourself in a crowd. The fire of peat lies in the
centre of the hut, surrounded by a few stones; wooden benches are nailed
on one side against the wall, and the other is partitioned off like a
large wooden cupboard, with sliding doors or curtains, for the family
bed, as you find all over Scotland, and even in Northumberland. The pigs
are running about the floor; hens are roosting over your head; the cows
are lowing in, what we should call, the parlour; nine or ten children,
or weans, as they call them, and a callant, or boy, who teaches the
weans, and the father and mother, and very probably their father and
mother, or one of them, in extreme age, are fixing their eyes on the
stranger.
In the summer of 1836, Mrs. Howitt and myself passed the night in such a
dwelling, and a slight notice of the place may present, to many of our
readers, a new view of cottage life. It was in Rosshire, some thirty or
forty miles north-west of Inverness, at a spot called the Comrie, lying
between Loch Echilty and Loch Luichart. A wild, and yet most beautiful
spot it was,--a little strath opening itself out between the wooded
mountains which surround Loch Echilty, and the bare stony hills in the
direction of Strath Conan. We came upon it after wandering through the
delicious fairyland of birch woods that clothe that Loch in the very
romance of picturesque beauty, springing up amongst the wildest chaos of
crags, here hanging over the water, and here surrounding the ruinous
blackness of some solitary hut, that, but for children playing before
it, would appear to have been tenantless for years. A stern defile
guarded by vast masses of projecting rocks, by places clothed with the
richest drapery of crimson heather, by places naked and lividly grey,
and height above height still scattered with climbing birch trees,
brought us to a little nameless loch hidden in the woods, girt with a
dense margin of reeds, and covered with the most magnificent display of
white water-lilies, and then appeared two of those little huts in this
Highland solitude. The evening was rapidly sinking into night, and we
were uncertain how far it was to the next inn. Two women appeared at the
door of one of the huts, and rather startled us with the information,
that the nearest inn in the way we proposed to go, was distant
five-and-twenty miles! That another mile brought us to the ferry over
the Conan, where the carriage-road ceased, and all beyond was mountain
and moorland waste. We seemed, as it were, to be on the very verge of
civilization; and there appeared to be nothing for us but to retrace our
way for some miles, or to take up our lodging in this house.
Weary as we were, this appeared the less objectionable alternative, and
we accepted the offer which the elder woman made us. The moment we did
so, the poor woman seemed struck with the rashness of her act. “What
shall I do for the like of you? What shall I find for the like of you?”
We assured her we should not be very fastidious guests, and in we went.
It was such a hut as I have just described. The fire lay on a hearth of
stones, with a few large stones built up against the mud wall to prevent
the house from being burnt. The woman’s husband, a farmer, was gone into
Morayshire with lambs; a hired shepherd sat on the side of the
partitioned bed, such as I have already described; two fine sheep-dogs
lay before the fire, and a troop of barelegged and kilted boys came
running in from some distant school. They were Macgregors, having come
hither from Dumbartonshire, and could, fortunately for us, speak
English. We sate on a bench in the ingle, and all these little
Macgregors, Grigor Macgregor, Peter and Duncan, and the rest, squatted
on the mud-floor, and alternately watched us and their eldest sister, a
fine barelegged lassie of eighteen, who was busy baking oatcakes for us.
It was a hot post both for herself and for us. She put on peats till the
hut was like an oven, and the smoke made our eyes smart almost past
endurance. Yet we watched the progress of her operation with great
interest, as she made a paste of oatmeal and water, rolled it out in
cakes, cut it into segments, baked them on an iron girdle over the fire,
and then reared them before the glowing peats to make them crisp. This
done, she found us some tea, and that was our supper. They had two or
three cows, but their milk was already in the process of being converted
into cheese; the potatoes and the oats of the last crop were exhausted,
and the wet season had prevented the ripening of the present. “There
was,” said our hostess, “a great cry in the country for food!” Our
fatigue, and this announcement, induced us to think we fared well. They
made us a comfortable bed in the spence, where we found four Gaelic
Bibles, and the History of Robinson Crusoe! Early in the morning we
pursued our way; but ere we took our leave, the poor woman came in from
fetching up her cows, her clothes wet to the very knees. When we
expressed our surprise--“O,” said she, “that is what we are used to
every day of our lives. While you have been in your bed, the herdboy has
three times gone round the corn-fields with his dogs, to chase away the
stags and roes into the woods. The last thing every night, while the
corn is growing in the field, he goes round--once again at midnight, and
then at the earliest dawn of day. Every night it must be done, or a
green blade would not be left. If you went in the gloaming with the man
into the wood, sir, you would see twenty stags as big as our cows. O
it’s an awful place for wild beasts--foxes and badgers, and serpents!
did you ever see a serpent, ma’am? Sometimes in a morning they rear
themselves up in a narrow path, and hiss at me bitterly.” As the poor
woman spoke, we stood at the door of her little tenement, and saw the
heavy dew lie glittering on the grass all round; and the primitive
cheese-press, consisting of a pole, one end of which was thrust into a
crevice of a rock, and the other weighted with a huge stone; and around
us were the heathy mountains and the woods; the mists and clouds
clinging to the sides of wild hills, or rolling away before the breeze
of morning; and the sound of the neighbouring torrent alone disturbing
the deep solitude. We could not avoid feeling how far was all this from
the cottage-life of England. We gave the poor woman what we thought a
fitting return for her hospitality, and left her overwhelmed with a
grateful astonishment, which shewed what was there the real value of
money.
This is a scene in the scale of comfort far below the general run of
labourers’ houses in England; but yet how far, infinitely far lower, do
many of our working people’s abodes sink. What dens have we in
manufacturing towns! What little, filthy, dismal, yet high-rented dens!
What cabins do some of our colliers and miners inhabit! What noisome,
amphibious abodes abound in our fishing villages, such as Crabbe has
painted! What places have I seen in different parts of England, which
everywhere obtain the name of _Rookeries_,--huge piles built for some
purpose which has not answered; or some deserted hall, let off in little
tenements; the windows broken, and stopped with old rags and hats; the
ground all round trodden down, covered with ash-heaps; a few stunted
bushes, or gooseberry trees, where once had been a garden, displaying
the ragged and tattered wash of the indigence of indigence: altogether
exhibiting such an air of poverty as impoverishes one’s very spirit, and
fills it with a nameless feeling of disgust and despondence for days
after. Such a place I particularly recollect seeing somewhere between
Netherby and Gretna-Green; and, observing an old man “daundering about,”
as he called it, as without hope and object, I asked him how this place
came to look so forlorn--“O,” said he, “we once could run our cows on
the waste, and did very well, but that is taken away. Sir James asked
the steward what the poor people must do, ‘O, they will all hooly[25]
away,’ said he; but where are we to hooly to?”
[25] Slip quietly away. A word often found in the old Border Ballads,
as “Then hooly, hooly up she rose,” etc.
Ah! cottage life! There is much more hidden under that name than ever
inspired the wish to build _cottages ornées_, or to inhabit them. There
is a vast mass of human interests within its circle, of which the world
takes little note. The loves and hopes; the trials and struggles; the
sufferings, deaths, and burials; the festivities and religious
confraternities; the indignities that fret, and the necessities that
compel, to action and union our simple brethren and sisters. How little
is truly known; how much is consequently misjudged; how great is the
indifference concerning them in those who have the power to work
miracles of love and happiness amongst them, and must one day stand with
them at the footstool of our common Father, who will demand of his
children how each has loved his brethren.
Let us turn our eyes, however, a moment from the dark side to the light
one. There is not a more beautiful sight in the world than that of our
English cottages, in those parts of the country where the violent
changes of the times have not been so sensibly felt. Where manufactures
have not introduced their red, staring, bald brick-houses, and what is
worse, their beershops and demoralization: where, in fact, a more
primitive simplicity remains. There, on the edges of the forests, in
quiet hamlets and sweet woody valleys, the little grey-thatched
cottages, with their gardens and old orchards, their rows of beehives,
and their porches clustered with jasmines and roses, stand:--
Hundreds of huts
All hidden in a sylvan gloom,--some perched
On verdant slopes from the low coppice cleared;
Some in deep dingles, secret as the nest
Of Robin Redbreast, built amongst the roots
Of pine, on whose tall top the throstle sings.
Hundreds of huts, yet all apart, and felt
Far from each other; ’mid the multitude
Of intervening stems; each glen or glade
By its own self a perfect solitude,
Hushed, but not mute.
_John Wilson._
There they stand, and give one a poetical idea of peace and happiness
which is inexpressible. Well may they be the admiration of foreigners.
In many of the southern counties, but I think nowhere more than in
Hampshire, do the cottages realize, in my view, every conception that
our poets have given us of them. One does, no doubt, when looking on
their quiet beauty, endow them with a repose and exemption from mortal
sufferings that can belong to no human dwelling; and Professor Wilson,
in his poem called “An Evening in Furness Abbey,” which appeared in
Blackwood’s Magazine, September, 1829,--a poem flushed all over with the
violet hues of poetry, and overflowing with tenderness and grace, gives
one this very delightful expression of a thought which has occurred to
many of us--
The day goes by
On which our soul’s beloved dies! The day
On which the body of the dead is stretched
By hands that decked it when alive; the day
On which the dead is shrouded; and the day
Of burial--one and all go by! The grave
Grows green ere long; the churchyard seems a place
Of pleasant rest, and all the cottages,
That keep for ever sending funerals
Within its gates, look cheerful every one,
As if the dwellers therein never died,
And this earth slumbered in perpetual peace.
But sobering down by such sad, yet sweet thoughts as these, our poetical
fancies of cottage life, and bringing them within the range of human
trouble and suffering, still these rustic abodes must inspire us with
ideas of a peace and purity of life, in most soothing contrast with the
hurry and immorality of cities. Blessings be on them wherever they
stand, in woodland valleys, or on open heaths, throughout fair England;
and may growing knowledge bring growth of happiness, widening the
capacity of enjoyment without touching the simplicity of feeling and the
strength of principle. Well may the weary wayfarer--
Lean on such humble gate and think the while,
O! that for me some home like this would smile;
Some cottage home to yield my aged form,
Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm.
There are thousands of them inhabited by woodmen, labourers, or keepers,
that are fit dwellings for the truest poet that ever lived; and it is
the _ideal_ of these picturesque and peace-breathing English cottages
that has given origin to some of the sweetest paradises in the
world--the cottages of the wealthy and the tasteful. What most lovely
creations of this description now abound in the finest parts of England,
with their delicious shrubberies, velvet lawns, hidden walks, and rustic
garden-huts; their little paddocks lying amid woods, and skirted with
waters; spots breathing the odour of dewy flowers, and containing in
small space all the elegance and the country enjoyments of life.
Happiness, it is true, is not to be dragged into such places; but what
places they are for the genuine lover of the country to invite her into!
The very feeling of the cumbrous pomp and circumstance of aristocratic
establishments in this country, makes one think of such sweet
hermitages with a sense of relief and congratulation. What more charming
abode has the wide earth for a spirit soothing itself with the pleasures
of literature and the consolation of genuine religion, far from the
wranglings pf political life, than such a one as the cottage, formerly
that of Mrs. Southey, at Buckland, on the border of the New Forest; of
Miss Mitford, at Three-Mile-Cross; or that of Wordsworth at Rydal? But
we must quit these earthly paradises to speak of other things.