In spite of discontents I might have remained to this day by the Otter,
in the daily and hourly expectation of seeing some new and wonderful
thing in Nature in that place where a crimson-eyed carrion-crow had
been revealed to me, had not a storm of thunder and rain broken over
the country to shake me out of a growing disinclination to move. We are,
body and mind, very responsive to atmospheric changes; for every storm
in Nature there is a storm in us--a change physical and mental. We make
our own conditions, it is true, and these react and have a deadening
effect on us in the long run, but we are never wholly deadened by
them--if we be not indeed dead, if the life we live can be called life.
We are told that there are rainless zones on the earth and regions of
everlasting summer: it is hard to believe that the dwellers in such
places can ever think a new thought or do a new thing. The morning rain
did not last very long, and before it had quite ceased I took up my
knapsack and set off towards the sea, determined on this occasion to
make my escape.
Three or four miles from Ottery St. Mary I overtook a cowman driving
nine milch cows along a deep lane and inquired my way of him. He gave me
many and minute directions, after which we got into conversation, and
I walked some distance with him. The cows he was driving were all pure
Devons, perfect beauties in their bright red coats in that greenest
place where every rain-wet leaf sparkled in the new sunlight. Naturally
we talked about the cows, and I soon found that they were his own and
the pride and joy of his life. We walked leisurely, and as the animals
went on, first one, then another would stay for a mouthful of grass,
or to pull down half a yard of green drapery from the hedge. It was so
lavishly decorated that the damage they did to it was not noticeable.
By and by we went on ahead of the cows, then, if one stayed too long or
strayed into some inviting side-lane, he would turn and utter a long,
soft call, whereupon the straggler would leave her browsing and hasten
after the others.
He was a big, strongly built man, a little past middle life and
grey-haired, with rough-hewn face--unprepossessing one would have
pronounced him until the intelligent, kindly expression of the eyes was
seen and the agreeable voice was heard. As our talk progressed and we
found how much in sympathy we were on the subject, I was reminded of
that Biblical expression about the shining of a man's face: "Wine that
maketh glad the heart of man"--I hope the total abstainers will pardon
me--"and oil that maketh his face to shine," we have in one passage.
This rather goes against our British ideas, since we rub no oil or
unguents on our skin, but only soap which deprives it of its natural
oil and too often imparts a dry and hard texture. Yet in that, to us,
disagreeable aspect of the skin caused by foreign fats, there is a
resemblance to the sudden brightening and glory of the countenance
in moments of blissful emotion or exaltation. No doubt the effect is
produced by the eyes, which are the mirrors of the mind, and as they are
turned full upon us they produce an illusion, seeming to make the whole
face shine.
In our talk I told him of long rambles on the Mendips, along the valley
of the Somerset Axe, where I had lately been, and where of all places,
in this island, the cow should be most esteemed and loved by man. Yet
even there, where, standing on some elevation, cows beyond one's power
to number could be seen scattered far and wide in the green vales
beneath, it had saddened me to find them so silent. It is not natural
for them to be dumb; they have great emotions and mighty voices--the
cattle on a thousand hills. Their morning and evening lowing is more to
me than any other natural sound--the melody of birds, the springs and
dying gales of the pines, the wash of waves on the long shingled beach.
The hills and valleys of that pastoral country flowing with milk and
honey should be vocal with it, echoing and re-echoing the long call
made musical by distance. The cattle are comparatively silent in that
beautiful district, and indeed everywhere in England, because men have
made them so. They have, when deprived of their calves, no motive for
the exercise of their voices. For two or three days after their new-born
calves have been taken from them they call loudly and incessantly,
day and night, like Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be
comforted; grief and anxiety inspires that cry--they grow hoarse with
crying; it is a powerful, harsh, discordant sound, unlike the long
musical call of the cow that has a calf, and remembering it, and leaving
the pasture, goes lowing to give it suck.
I also told him of the cows of a distant country where I had lived, that
had the maternal instinct so strong that they refused to yield their
milk when deprived of their young. They "held it back," as the saying
is, and were in a sullen rage, and in a few days their fountains dried
up, and there was no more milk until calving-time came round once more.
He replied that cows of that temper were not unknown in South Devon.
Very proudly he pointed to one of the small herd that followed us as
an example. In most cases, he said, the calf was left from two or three
days to a week, or longer, with the mother to get strong, and then taken
away. This plan could not be always followed; some cows were so greatly
distressed at losing the young they had once suckled that precautions
had to be taken and the calf smuggled away as quietly as possible when
dropped--if possible before the mother had seen it. Then there were the
extreme cases in which the cow refused to be cheated. She knew that a
calf had been born; she had felt it within her, and had suffered pangs
in bringing it forth; if it appeared not on the grass or straw at her
side then it must have been snatched away by the human creatures that
hovered about her, like crows and ravens round a ewe in travail on some
lonely mountain side.
That was the character of the cow he had pointed out; even when she had
not seen the calf of which she had been deprived she made so great an
outcry and was thrown into such a rage and fever, refusing to be milked
that, finally, to save her, it was thought necessary to give her back
the calf. Now, he concluded, it was not attempted to take it away: twice
a day she was allowed to have it with her and suckle it, and she was a
very happy animal.
I was glad to think that there was at least one completely happy cow in
Devonshire.
After leaving the cowkeeper I had that feeling of revulsion very
strongly which all who know and love cows occasionally experience at
the very thought of beef. I was for the moment more than tolerant of
vegetarianism, and devoutly hoped that for many days to come I should
not be sickened with the sight of a sirloin on some hateful board, cold,
or smoking hot, bleeding its red juices into the dish when gashed with a
knife, as if undergoing a second death. We do not eat negroes, although
their pigmented skins, flat feet, and woolly heads proclaim them a
different species; even monkey's flesh is abhorrent to us, merely
because we fancy that that creature in its ugliness resembles some
old men and some women and children that we know. But the gentle
large-brained social cow that caresses our hands and faces with
her rough blue tongue, and is more like man's sister than any other
non-human being--the majestic, beautiful creature with the juno eyes,
sweeter of breath than the rosiest virgin--we slaughter and feed on her
flesh--monsters and cannibals that we are!
But though cannibals, it is very pleasant to find that many cowmen
love their cows. Walking one afternoon by a high unkept hedge near
Southampton Water, I heard loud shouts at intervals issuing from a
point some distance ahead, and on arriving at the spot found an old man
leaning idly over a gate, apparently concerned about nothing. "What
are you shouting about?" I demanded. "Cows," he answered, with a glance
across the wide green field dotted with a few big furze and bramble
bushes. On its far side half a dozen cows were, quietly grazing. "They
came fast enough when I was a-feeding of 'em," he presently added; "but
now they has to find for theirselves they don't care how long they keeps
me." I was going to suggest that it would be a considerable saving of
time if he went for them, but his air of lazy contentment as he leant
on the gate showed that time was of no importance to him. He was a
curious-looking old man, in old frayed clothes, broken boots, and a cap
too small for him. He had short legs, broad chest, and long arms, and
a very big head, long and horselike, with a large shapeless nose and
grizzled beard and moustache. His ears, too, were enormous, and stood
out from the head like the handles of a rudely shaped terra-cotta vase
or jar. The colour of his face, the ears included, suggested burnt clay.
But though Nature had made him ugly, he had an agreeable expression,
a sweet benign look in his large dark eyes, which attracted me, and I
stayed to talk with him.
It has frequently been said that those who are much with cows, and have
an affection for them, appear to catch something of their expression--to
look like cows; just as persons of sympathetic or responsive nature,
and great mobility of face, grow to be like those they live and are in
sympathy with. The cowman who looks like a cow may be more bovine than
his fellows in his heavier motions and slower apprehensions, but he also
exhibits some of the better qualities--the repose and placidity of the
animal.
He said that he was over seventy, and had spent the whole of his life
in the neighbourhood, mostly with cows, and had never been more than a
dozen miles from the spot where we were standing. At intervals while we
talked he paused to utter one of his long shouts, to which the cows paid
no attention. At length one of the beasts raised her head and had a long
look, then slowly crossed the field to us, the others following at some
distance. They were shorthorns, all but the leader, a beautiful young
Devon, of a uniform rich glossy red; but the silky hair on the distended
udder was of an intense chestnut, and all the parts that were not
clothed were red too--the teats, the skin round the eyes, the moist
embossed nose; while the hoofs were like polished red pebbles, and even
the shapely horns were tinged with that colour. Walking straight up to
the old man, she began deliberately licking one of his ears with her big
rough tongue, and in doing so knocked off his old rakish cap. Picking
it up he laughed like a child, and remarked, "She knows me, this one
does--and she loikes me."