Round About a Great Estate Part 3

In one such hedgerow leading from the copse the maple-bushes in spring were hung with the green flowers which, though they depend in their season from so many trees, as the oak, are perhaps rarely observed.

The elder-bushes in full white bloom scented the air for yards around both by night and day; the white bloom shows on the darkest evening.

Besides several crab-stoles--the buds of the crab might be mistaken for thorns growing pointed at the extreme end of the twigs--there was a large crab tree, which bore a plentiful crop. The lads sharpen their knives by drawing the blade slowly to and fro through a crab-apple; the acid of the fruit eats the steel like aquafortis. They hide stores of these crabs in holes in the hayricks, supposing them to improve by keeping. There, too, they conceal quant.i.ties of the apples from the old orchards, for the fruit in them is often almost as hard and not much superior in flavour to the crab. These apples certainly become more mellow after several months in the warm hay.

A wild 'plum,' or bullace, grew in one place; the plum about twice the size of a sloe, with a bloom upon the skin like the cultivated fruit, but lacking its sweetness. Yet there was a distinct difference of taste: the 'plum' had not got the extreme harshness of the sloe. A quant.i.ty of dogwood occupied a corner; in summer it bore a pleasing flower; in the autumn, after the black berries appeared upon it, the leaves became a rich bronze colour, and some when the first frosts touched them curled up at the edge and turned crimson. There were two or three guelder-rose bushes--the wild shrub--which were covered in June with white bloom; not in snowy b.a.l.l.s like the garden variety, but flat and circular, the florets at the edge of the circle often whitest, and those in the centre greenish. In autumn the slender boughs were weighed down with heavy bunches of large purplish berries, so full of red juice as to appear on the point of bursting. As these soon disappeared they were doubtless eaten by birds.

Besides the hawthorn and briar there were several species of willow--the snake-skin willow, so called because it sheds its bark; the 'snap-willow,' which is so brittle that every gale breaks off its feeble twigs, and pollards. One of these, hollow and old, had upon its top a crowd of parasites. A bramble had taken root there, and hung over the side; a small currant-bush grew freely--both, no doubt, unwittingly planted by birds--and finally the bines of the noxious bitter-sweet or nightshade, starting from the decayed wood, supported themselves among the willow-branches, and in autumn were bright with red berries. Ash-stoles, the buds on whose boughs in spring are hidden under black sheaths; nut-tree stoles, with ever-welcome nuts--always stolen here, but on the Downs, where they are plentiful, staying till they fall; young oak growing up from the b.u.t.t of a felled tree. On these oak-twigs sometimes, besides the ordinary round galls, there may be found another gall, larger, and formed, as it were, of green scales one above the other.

Where shall we find in the artificial and, to my thinking, tasteless pleasure-grounds of modern houses so beautiful a shrubbery as this old hedgerow? Nor were evergreens wanting, for the ivy grew thickly, and there was one holly-bush--not more, for the soil was not affected by holly. The tall cow-parsnip or 'gicks' rose up through the bushes; the great hollow stem of the angelica grew at the edge of the field, on the verge of the gra.s.s, but still sheltered by the brambles. Some reeds early in spring thrust up their slender green tubes, tipped with two spear-like leaves. The reed varies in height according to the position in which it grows. If the hedge has been cut it does not reach higher than four or five feet; when it springs from a deep, hollow corner, or with bushes to draw it up, you can hardly touch its tip with your walking-stick. The leaders of the black bryony, lifting themselves above the bushes, and having just there nothing to cling to, twist around each other, and two bines thus find mutual support where one alone would fall of its own weight.

In the watery places the sedges send up their dark flowers, dusted with light yellow pollen, rising above the triangular stem with its narrow, ribbed leaf. The reed-sparrow or bunting sits upon the spray over the ditch with its carex gra.s.s and rushes; he is a graceful bird, with a crown of glossy black. Hops climb the ash and hang their cl.u.s.ters, which impart an aromatic scent to the hand that plucks them; broad burdock leaves, which the mouchers put on the top of their baskets to s.h.i.+eld their freshly gathered watercresses from the suns.h.i.+ne; creeping avens, with b.u.t.tercup-like flowers and long stems that straggle across the ditch, and in autumn are tipped with a small ball of soft spines; mints, strong-scented and unmistakable; yarrow, white and sometimes a little lilac, whose flower is perhaps almost the last that the bee visits. In the middle of October I have seen a wild bee on a last stray yarrow.

On the higher and drier bank some few slender square stems of betony, with leaves in pairs like wings, stand up tall and stiff as the summer advances. The l.a.b.i.ate purplish flowers are all at the top; each flower is set in the cup by a curve at the lesser end, like a crook; the leaves and stalk are slightly rough, and have an aromatic bitter perfume when crushed. On the flower of a great thistle a moth has alighted, and hidden under its broad wing is a humble-bee, the two happy together and neither interfering with the other. Sometimes a bee will visit the white rose on the briar.

Near the gateway, on the edge of the trodden ground, grows a tall, stout, bushy plant, like a shrub, with pale greyish-green leaves, much lobed and divided: the top of each branch in August is thick with small whitish-green flowers tipped with brown. These, if rubbed in the hand, emit a strong and peculiar scent, with a faint flavour of lavender, and yet quite different. This is the mugwort. Still later on, under the shade of the trees on the mound, there appear bunches of a pale herb, with greenish l.a.b.i.ate flowers, and a scent like hops: it is the woodsage, and if tasted the leaf will be found extremely bitter.

In the mornings of autumn the webs of the spiders hang along the hedge bowed a little with dew, like hammocks of gossamer slung from thorn to thorn. Then the hedge-sparrows, perching on the topmost boughs of the hawthorn, cry 'peep-peep' mournfully; the heavy dew on the gra.s.s beneath arranges itself in two rows of drops along the edges of the blades. From the day when the first leaf appears upon the hardy woodbine, in the early year, to the time when the partridge finds the eggs in the ant-hill, and on again till the last harebell dies, there is always something beautiful or interesting in these great hedgerows.

Indeed, it is impossible to exhaust them. I have omitted the wild geranium with its tiny red petals scarce seen in the ma.s.s of green, the mosses, the ferns, and have scarcely said a word about the living creatures that haunt it. But then one might begin to write a book about a hedgerow when a boy and find it incomplete in old age.

A much-neglected path led from the park through some fir plantations down to the fishpond. After the first turn of the narrow track the close foliage of the firs, through which nothing could be seen, shut out the world with green walls. The strip of blue sky visible above was wider than the path, because the trees sloped away somewhat, their branches shortening towards the top; still it was so contracted that a pa.s.sing woodpigeon was seen but for a second as he went over. Every step carried me into deeper silence--the sudden call of a jay was startling in its harsh contrast. Presently the path widened where the thickly planted firs were succeeded by sycamores, horse-chestnuts, alders, and aspen--trees which stand farther apart, and beneath which some underwood grew. Here there were thickets of hawthorn and bramble and elder bushes which can find no place among firs.

The ground now sloped rapidly down into a hollow, and upon this descent numbers of skeleton leaves were scattered. There was no other spot all over the Chace where they could be seen like this; you might walk for hours and not find one, yet here there were hundreds.

Sometimes they covered the ground in layers, several leaves one on the other. In spring violets pushed up through them and blue-bells--sweet hope rising over grey decay.

Lower down a large pond almost filled the hollow. It was surrounded on three sides by trees and thickets; on the fourth an irregular margin of marshy gra.s.s extended. Floating leaves of weeds covered the surface of the water; these weeds had not been disturbed for years, and there was no check to their growth except their own profusion, for they choked each other. The pond had long ceased to supply fish for the table. Before railways brought the sea so near, such ponds were very useful. At that time almost everything consumed came from the estate itself: the bread, the beef, the mutton, the venison, game, fish, all was supplied by the adjacent woods, the fields, or the water. The lord in old days hunted the deer on his own domain, brought down game with a crossbow or captured it with nets, and fished or netted his own streams and ponds. These great parks and chaces enclosed everything, so that it was within easy reach of his own door. Sometimes the lord and his visitors strolled out to see the fishponds netted.

This pond had originally been one of a series, but the others had been drained and added to the meadows. It was said to be staked at the bottom to prevent illicit netting; but if so, the stakes by this time were probably rotten or buried in mud formed from the decaying weeds, the fallen leaves, and branches which were gradually closing it up. A few yards from the edge there was a ma.s.s of ivy through which a little brown thatch could be distinguished, and on approaching nearer this low roof was found to cover the entrance to a cave. It was an ice-house excavated in the sloping ground or bank, in which, 'when George the Third was King,' the ice of the ponds had been preserved to cool the owner's wine in summer. Ice was then a luxury for the rich only; but when so large a supply arrived from America, a supply increased by freezing machines, the ice-house lost its importance. The door, once so jealously closed, was gone, and the dead leaves of last year had gathered in corners where the winds had whirled them.

The heat of a warm June day seemed still more powerful in this hollow.

The sedges, into which two or three moorhens had retired at my approach, were still, and the leaves on the boughs overhanging the water were motionless. Where there was a s.p.a.ce free from weeds--a deeper hole near the bank--a jack basked at the surface in the suns.h.i.+ne. High above on the hill stood a tall dead fir, from whose trunk the bark was falling; it had but one branch, which stood out bare and stark across the sky. There came a sound like distant thunder, but there were no clouds overhead, and it was not possible to see far round. Pus.h.i.+ng gently through the hawthorn bushes and ash-stoles at the farther end of the pond, I found a pleasant little stream rus.h.i.+ng swiftly over a clear chalky bottom, hastening away down to the larger brook.

Beyond it rose a mound and hedgerow, up to which came the meadows, where, from the noise, the cattle seemed racing to and fro, teased by insects. Tiny black flies alighting on my hands and face, irritated the skin; the haymakers call them 'thunder-flies;' but the murmur of the running water was so delicious that I sat down on a bulging tree-root, almost over the stream, and listened to the thrushes singing. Had it been merely warm they would have been silent. They do not sing in dry suns.h.i.+ne, but they knew what was coming; so that there is no note so hated by the haymaker as that of the thrush. The birds were not in the firs, but in the ash-trees along the course of the rill.

The voice of the thrush is the most 'cultivated,' so to speak, of all our birds: the trills, the runs, the variations, are so numerous and contrasted. Not even the nightingale can equal it: the nightingale has not nearly such command: the thrush seems to know no limit. I own I love the blackbird best, but in excellence of varied music the thrush surpa.s.ses all. Few birds, except those that are formed for swimming, come to a still pond. They like a clear running stream; they visit the sweet running water for drinking and bathing. Dreaming away the time, listening to the rush of the water bubbling about the stones, I did not notice that the sky had become overcast, till suddenly a clap of thunder near at hand awakened me. Some heavy drops of rain fell; I looked up and saw the dead branch of the fir on the hill stretched out like a withered arm across a black cloud.

Hastening back to the ice-house, I had barely entered the doorway when the lightning, visible at noonday, flashed red and threatening, the thunder crackled and snapped overhead, and the rain fell in a white sheet of water. There were but two of these overpowering discharges with their peculiar crack and snap; the electricity pa.s.sed on quickly, and the next clap roared over the woods. But the rain was heavier than before, the fall increased after every flash, however distant, and the surface of the pond was threshed by the drops which bore down with them many leaves weakened by blight.

Doubtless the mowers in the meadows had hidden the blades of their scythes under the swathe, and the haymakers had placed their p.r.o.ngs in the ditches: nothing is so likely to attract a shock of lightning as a p.r.o.ng carried on the shoulder with the bright steel points upwards. In the farmhouses the old folk would cover up the looking-gla.s.ses lest the quicksilver should draw the electric fluid. The haymakers will tell you that sometimes when they have been standing under a hedge out of a storm a flash of lightning has gone by with a distinct sound like 'swish,' and immediately afterwards the wet ground has sent forth a vapour, or, as they say, smoked.

Woodpigeons and many other birds seem to come home to woods and copses before and during a storm. The woodpigeon is one of the freest of birds to all appearance: he pa.s.ses over the highest trees and goes straight away for miles. Yet, though it is usual to speak of wild birds and of their freedom, the more you watch their ways the more you feel that the wildest have their routes and customs: that they do not act entirely from the impulse of the moment, but have their unwritten laws. How do the gnats there playing under the horse-chestnut boughs escape being struck down by the heavy raindrops, each one of which looks as if it would drown so small a creature? The numbers of insects far exceed all that words can express: consider the clouds of midges that often dance over a stream. One day, chancing to glance at a steeple, I saw what looked like thin smoke issuing from the top of it.

Now it shot out in a straight line from the gilded beak of the weatherc.o.c.k, now veered about, or declined from the vane. It was an innumerable swarm of insects, whose numbers made them visible at that height.

Some insects are much more powerful than would be supposed. A garden was enclosed with fresh palings formed of split oak so well seasoned (split oak is the hardest of wood) that it was difficult to train any creepers against them, for a nail could not be driven in without the help of a bradawl. Pa.s.sing along the path one afternoon I heard a peculiar rasping sound like a very small saw at work, and found it proceeded from four wasps biting the oak for the materials of their nest. The noise they made was audible four or five yards away, and upon looking closer I found the palings all scored and marked in short shallow grooves. The scores and marks extended along that part of the palings where the suns.h.i.+ne usually fell; there were none on the shady side, the wasps preferring to work in the sunlight.

Soon the clouds began to break, and then the sun shone on innumerable rain-drops. I at once started forth, knowing that such a storm is often followed by several lesser showers with brief intervals between.

The deserted ice-house was rarely visited--only, perhaps, when some borage was wanted to put in summer drinks. For a thick growth of borage had sprung up by it, where perhaps a small garden patch had once been cultivated, for there was a pear-tree near. The plant, with its scent of cuc.u.mber, grew very strong; the blue flowers when fallen, if they had not been observed when growing, might be supposed to have been inserted exactly upside down to their real manner of attachment.

In autumn the leaves of the pear-tree reddened, and afterwards the ivy over the entrance to the ice-house flowered; then in the cold months of early spring the birds came for the ivy-berries.

CHAPTER VI.

A FARMER OF THE OLDEN TIMES.

The winding paths traced by a hare in spring as he roams over an arable field show that he must cover a mile within a furlong. From a gateway one morning I watched a hare busy in this way, restlessly pa.s.sing to and fro over the 'lands.' Every motion was visible, because, although the green wheat was rising in an adjacent field, no crop had yet appeared here. Now the hare came direct towards me, running down a furrow; then he turned short and followed a course like the letter V; next he crossed the angle of the field and came back along the sh.o.r.e of the ditch, under the hedge. Then away to the centre of the field, where he stayed some time exploring up one furrow and down another, his ears and the hump of his back only seen above the clods.

But suddenly he caught a scent of something that alarmed him, and away he went full speed: when on the open ground the peculiar way in which the hind limbs are thrown forward right under the body, thus giving an immense 'stride,' was clearly displayed. I had been so interested in the hare that I had not observed Hilary coming along on the other side of the low fence, looking at his wheat. The hare, busy as he was and seeming to see nothing, had crossed his 'wind.' Hilary came to me, and we walked together along the waggon-track, repa.s.sing the wheat. He was full about it: he was always grieving over the decadence of the wheat crop.

There was nothing, he went on, so pleasant to watch as it came up, nothing that required so much care and skill, nothing so thoroughly a.s.sociated with the traditions of English farming as wheat, and yet nothing so disappointing. Foreign importations had destroyed this the very mainstay. Now, that crop which he had just left had 'tillered out' well; but what profit should he get from the many stalks that had tillered or sprung from each single grain, thus promising a fiftyfold return? It had been well got in, and, as the old saw had it, 'Well sown, half grown;' it had been in the ground the proper time ('Long in the bed, big in the head'); but likely enough the price next autumn would not much more than pay the expenses of preparation.

The thunderstorm before Christmas was not perhaps a favourable omen, since

Winter's thunder and summer's flood Bode old England no good.

Last year showed that 'summer's flood' was as destructive as in the olden time. But then there would have been a rise of prices, according to the saying,--

When the vale shall feed the hill, Every man shall eat his fill.

But when the hill shall feed the vale, The penny loaf shall be but small.

Now, last season, so far as our home harvests were concerned, the 'hill' did feed the 'vale,' but the penny loaves were as large and as plentiful as usual, owing to foreign grain. In those old days, seventy or eighty years since, the whole population of the kingdom watched the weather with anxiety; and it was then that the signs and tokens of birds and plants and the set of the wind at particular times were regarded as veritable oracles to be inquired into not without fear and trembling.

Hilary heard all about it when he was a lad from old Jonathan, who had a corn-farm up on the hills, and where he used to go to plough. Hilary never stated the exact degree, but there was some relations.h.i.+p between them--two branches, I fancy, of the same family. He seemed to have a very bitter memory of the old man (now dead), who had been a hard master to him in his youth; besides which, some family jar had arisen over money matters; still, he was fond of quoting Jonathan in reference to wheat and the heyday of corn-farming. Jonathan remembered when a load of wheat fetched 55_l._--a load being five quarters or ten sacks--or 11_l._ a quarter. The present average of wheat was about 2_l._ 6_s._ per quarter. At the same time bread was at 3_s._ a gallon; it is now about 1_s._ 6_d._ The wages of an agricultural labourer were 6_s._ a week. It was gambling, positive gambling, in the staff of life.

No farmer was held in any esteem if he did not keep his wheat ricks till harvest came again before thres.h.i.+ng them out: men grew rich suddenly and knew not what to do with their money. Farmers who had been brought up 'hard,' living like labourers, working like labourers, and with little more amus.e.m.e.nt than labourers, all at once found their pockets full of coin. The wheat they had been selling at 5_l._ a load ran up to 50_l._ With their purses thus crammed full, what were they to do? There was nothing but drink, and they did drink.

In those days the farmer in his isolated homestead was more cut off from the world than the settler at the present time in the backwoods or on the prairies. The telegraph wires span the continent of America, and are carried across the dry deserts of Australia. Wherever the settler may be, he is never very far from the wires or the railway; the railway meets the ocean steamer; and we can form no conception of the utter lack of communication in the old world of our immediate forefathers. The farmer, being away from the main road and the track of the mail coaches, knew no one but his neighbours, saw no one, and heard but little. Amus.e.m.e.nts there were none, other than could be had at the alehouse or by riding into the market town to the inn there. So that when this great flush of prosperity came upon them, old Jonathan and his friends had nothing to do but drink.

Up at The Idovers, as his place was called, a lonely homestead on a plain between the Downs, they used to a.s.semble, and at once put up the shutters, whether it was dark or not, not wis.h.i.+ng to know whether it was day or night. Sometimes the head carter would venture in for instructions, and be gruffly told to take his team and do so and so.

'Eez, zur,' he would reply, 'uz did thuck job isterday.' His master had ordered him to do it the day before, but was oblivious that twenty-four hours had pa.s.sed. The middle-aged men stood this continuous drinking without much harm, their const.i.tutions having become hardened and 'set,' but it killed off numbers of the younger men.

They drank ale princ.i.p.ally--strong ale, for at that time in lonely farmhouses they were guiltless of wines and spirits. But the enormous price of 50_l._ per load suggested luxuries, and it was old Jonathan at The Idovers who introduced gin. Till then no gin even--nothing but ale--had been consumed in that far-away spot; but Jonathan brought in the gin, which speedily became popular. He called it 'spoon-drink' (a spoon being used with the sugar) as a distinguis.h.i.+ng name, and as spoon-drink accordingly it was known. When any one desired to reduce the strength of his gla.s.s, they did indeed pour him out some more water from the kettle; but having previously filled the kettle with the spirit, his last state became worse than the first.

While thus they revelled, the labourers worked with the flails in the barn thres.h.i.+ng out the truly golden grain. The farmers used to take pains to slip round upon them unexpectedly, or meet them as they were going home from work, in order to check the pilfering of the wheat.

The labourer was not paid wholly in cash; he had a bushel of the 'tail,' or second flour, from the mill in lieu of money, settling once a month. Their life was hard indeed. But the great prosperity which had come upon the farmers did them no good. In too many cases it melted away in drink. The habit of drinking became settled in a family. Bad habits endured after the prosperity had departed; and in some cases those who had once owned their farms as well as occupied them had to quit the homes of their forefathers. Here and there one, however, laid the foundation of a fortune, as fortunes are understood in the country; and shrewd old Jonathan was one of these.

Even down to very recent days a spell of drinking--simple drinking--was the staple amus.e.m.e.nt of many an otherwise respectable farmer. Not many years since it was not unusual for some well-to-do farmer of the old school to ride off on his nag, and not be heard of for a week, till he was discovered at a distant roadside inn, where he had spent the interval in straightforward drinking. These habits are now happily extinct. It was in those old times that wheat was bought and h.o.a.rded with the express object of raising the price to famine pitch: a thing then sometimes practicable, though not always successful. Thus in 1801 the price of wheat in March was 55_l._ per load, while in October it had fallen to 15_l._ Men forgot the misery of the poor in their eagerness for guineas.

Hilary, with all his old prejudices, was not so foolish as to desire a return of times like that. He had undergone privation himself in youth, for farmers' sons were but a little better off than plough-lads even in his early days; and he did not wish to make money by another man's suffering. Still he was always grieving about the wheat crop, and how it had fallen in estimation. It was a sight to see the gusto with which he would run his hand into a sack of wheat to sample it.

'Here, feel this,' he would say to me, 'you can slip your hand in up to your elbow; and now hold up your palm--see, the grains are as plump as cherry-stones.'

After hearing Hilary talk so much of old Jonathan I thought I should like to see the place where he had lived, and later in the season walked up on the hills for that purpose. The stunted fir-trees on the Down gave so little shadow that I was glad to find a hawthorn under whose branches I could rest on the sward. The prevalent winds of winter sweeping without check along the open slope had bent the hawthorn before them, and the heat of the sultry summer day appeared the greater on that exposed height. On either hand hills succeeded to hills, and behind I knew they extended farther than the eye could reach. Immediately beneath in front there was a plain, at its extreme boundary a wood, and beyond that the horizon was lost in the summer haze. Wheat, barley, and oats--barley and wheat and beans, completely occupied the plain. It was one vast expanse of cereals, without a sign of human life; for the reaper had not yet commenced, and the bailiffs'

cottages were hidden among the ricks. There was an utter silence at noonday; nothing but yellowing wheat beneath, the ramparts of the hills around, and the sun above.

But, though out of sight, there was a farmhouse behind a small copse and clump of elms full of rooks' nests, a short way from the foot of the Down. This was The Idovers, once the residence of old Jonathan; it was the last farm before reaching the hill district proper, and from the slope here all the fields of which it consisted were visible. The house was small, for in those days farmers did not look to live in villas, and till within the last few years even the parlour floor was of stone flags. Rushes used to be strewn in the halls of palaces in ancient times, and seventy years ago old Jonathan grew his own carpets.

The softest and best of the bean straw grown on the farm was selected and scattered on the floor of the sitting-rooms as warm and dry to the feet, and that was all the carpet in the house. Just before sheep-shearing time, too, Jonathan used to have the nettles cut that flourished round the back of the sheds, and strewn on the floor of the barn. The nettles shrivelled up dry, and the wool did not stick to them, but could be gathered easily.

With his own hands he would carry out a quart of beans to the pigs---just a quart at a time and no more, that they might eat every one and that none might be wasted. So, too, he would carry them a few acorns in his coat-pocket, and watch the relish with which the swine devoured their favourite food. He saved every bit of crooked wood that was found about the place; for at that date iron was expensive, and wood that had grown crooked and was therefore strong as well as curved was useful for a hundred purposes. Fastened to a wall, for instance, it did for a hook upon which to hang things. If an apple-tree died in the orchard it was cut out to form part of a plough and saved till wanted.