Grain and Chaff from an English Manor Part 11

No pedigree Shropshire breeder will, as a rule, buy rams bred outside his own district, for fear of introducing coa.r.s.eness and an alteration of the established exhibition type.

An amusing incident happened at Mr. Graham's sale at Yardley near Birmingham, at which I was present. Mr. Graham had a reputation as a Shropshire sheep-breeder; though not actually farming in the county, his land was not unsuitable, and, on one occasion, I believe, he won the first prize for a shearling ram at the show of the Royal Agricultural Society of England.

I noticed a very non-agricultural individual in a top hat, who tried to get into conversation with me and who succeeded in getting a luncheon ticket gratis. These sale luncheons were at the time very bountiful spreads, including plenty of champagne, and the man under my observation made a very hearty meal. Short speeches and toasts always follow, but an adjournment is quickly made to the sale tent, before the evaporation of the effects of the hospitality. It is the custom for a glove to be pa.s.sed round to collect subscriptions for the shepherd, during the progress of the sale, and on this occasion two young fellows undertook the duty of collectors. The man, who had done himself so well at Mr. Graham's expense, was evidently not buying or even making bids, and to each of the collectors he said he had already contributed to the other. Being suspicious they compared notes, and found that he had made the same excuse to both. Such meanness after the hospitality he had received was intolerable; shouting, "He's a Welsher," they lifted him bodily, protesting and struggling, rushed him out of the tent into a neighbouring field, and cast him into a dirty pond covered with green and slimy duckweed! A miserable object he scrambled out, for the pond was shallow, and took his dishevelled and bedraggled presence away as fast as he could limp along, amid the laughter and jeers of the crowd.

The Hampshire Down ram sales in the palmy days of farming were organized upon the same scale of liberality, and while the sale was proceeding steam was kept up by handing round boxes of sixpenny cigars, and brandy and water in buckets. It is, of course, good policy to keep a company of buyers in good humour, but I think it has long since been recognized that hospitality was carried a little too far in those times of prosperity, and, in these degenerate if more business-like days, extravagance is much less evident, though there is a hearty welcome and abundance for all.

Agricultural shows under favourable weather conditions are always popular and well-attended. The large exhibitions of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, the Bath and West of England, and the Royal Counties, especially attract immense crowds; much business in novel implements, machinery, seeds, and artificial fertilizers, was done when times were good, and the towns in which the shows are held benefit by a large increase in general trade. The weather, however, is the arbiter as to the attendance, upon which the financial result of the show depends.

In 1879, the last of the miserable decade that ruined thousands of farmers all over the country with almost continuous wet seasons, poor crops, and wretched prices, the Royal Agricultural Society held its show at Kilburn. The ground had been carefully prepared and adapted for the great show with the usual liberal outlay; the work for next year's show always commencing as soon as the show of the current year is over; but the site was situated on the stiff London clay, and, after weeks of summer rains and the traffic caused by collecting the heavy engines and machinery and the materials used in the construction of the sheds and buildings, the ground was churned into a quagmire of clay and water, so that in places it was impa.s.sable, and some of the exhibits were isolated. Thousands of wattled hurdles were purchased in Hampshire, and laid flat on the mud along the main routes to the tents and sheds, but they were quickly trodden in out of sight. Many ponderous engines were bogged on their way to their appointed places; nothing could move them, and they remained looking like derelict wrecks, plastered with mud, sunk unevenly above the axles of their wheels.

I attended the show and shall never forget the scene of disaster. One afternoon the Prince of Wales--the late King Edward--and a Royal party made a gallant attempt, in carriages, to see the princ.i.p.al exhibits, and succeeded, by following a carefully selected and guarded route.

The crowd was dense by the side of the track, and people were making a harvest by letting out chairs to stand on, so as to get a view of the procession, with cries of, "'Ere you are, sir; 'ere you are, warranted not to sink in more than a mile!" Outside the show-yard, too, the streets were lined with long rows of nondescripts, sc.r.a.ping the adhesive clay off the shoes of the people leaving the show.

I had a pocket of my hops on exhibition entered in the Worcester cla.s.s, and had great difficulty in getting near it. I found the shed at last, deserted and surrounded by water, with a pool below the benches on which the hops were staged. My pocket was sold straight from the show-yard, and when my factor sent in the account, I found that the pocket had gained no less than seventeen pounds from the damp to which it had been subjected since it left my premises, about ten days previously; hops, at that time, were worth about 1s. a pound, so that the increased value more than balanced all expenses.

A story is told of Tennyson at the Royal Counties show at Guildford.

Accompanied by a lady and child he was walking round the exhibits, closely followed by an ardent admirer, anxious to catch any nights of fancy that might fall from his lips. Time pa.s.sed, and the poet showed no signs of inspiration until the party approached a refreshment tent; then, to the lady he said, to the astonishment of the follower, "Just look after this child a minute while I go and get a gla.s.s of beer!" I cannot vouch for the truth of this story, but I tell the tale as 'twas told to me.

It is surprising how long farm implements will last if kept in the dry and repaired when necessary. I remember a waggon at Alton in the seventies, which bore the name of the original owner and the date 1795; it was still in use. When I decided to give up farming, or rather, when farming had given up me, I disposed of my stock and implements by the usual auction sale. The attraction of a pedigree herd of Jerseys, and a useful lot of horses and implements, brought a large company together, and Aldington was a lively place that day. I was talking to my son-in-law some time afterwards, and spoke with amus.e.m.e.nt about the price an old iron Cambridge roller had made, not in the least knowing who was the purchaser, until he said, "And _I was the mug_ who bought it!" I believe, however, that a year or two later it fully maintained its price when valued to the next owner, and probably to-day it must be worth at least three times the money. I can trace its history for a period of fifty-three years, and I don't think it was new at the beginning.

CHAPTER XII.

FARM SPECIALISTS.

"And who that knew him could forget The busy wrinkles round his eyes."

--_The Miller's Daughter_.

Many specialists, in distinct professions, visited the farm in the course of every twelve months, and each appeared at the season when his particular services were likely to be required. Among these an ancient grafter was one of the most important, and April was the month which brought him to Aldington. In January we had usually beheaded some trees that we considered not worth leaving as they were: these would be trees producing inferior and nondescript cider apples, or perry pears. And we had already cut, and laid in a shady place, half covered with soil, the young shoots of profitable sorts to furnish the grafts for converting the beheaded trees into valuable producers.

The old man's function was to prepare the grafts, and unite them in deftly-cut notches with their new parents. His was a rosy-cheeked and many-wrinkled face, reminding one of an apple stored all the winter, and, in his brown velveteen coat, with immense pockets, he made a notable figure. He loved a chat and was always happy and communicative, and his arrival seemed as much a herald of spring as that of the welcome cuckoo. He was paid "by the piece,"

"three-halfpence a graft and cider," quant.i.ty not specified, but an important part of the bargain because of a superst.i.tion that grafts "unwetted" would not thrive! Some of these large trees would have ten or more limbs requiring separate grafting, and therefore they earned him a considerable sum, but it is surprising how soon they make a new head, come into bearing, and repay with interest the cost of the work.

He was a thoughtful old man and a moralist. I can see him now, standing with his snuff-box open ready in his hand, and saying very solemnly, "I often thinks as an apple-tree is very similar to a child, for you know, sir, we're told to train up a child in the way he shall go, and when he is old he will not depart therefrom." He then refreshed himself with a mighty pinch of snuff, closing his box with a snap that emphasized his air of complete conviction.

I think the sheep-dipper was one of the early arrivals. He brings with him an apparatus which provides a bath, and a kind of gangway, rising at an angle from it, upon which the sheep can stand after immersion, to allow the superfluous liquid to find its way back into the bath; each sheep is lifted by two men into the bath containing insecticide, and has an interval for dripping before it rejoins the flock. In the days when Viper was young, he was introduced to the process and given a dip himself, much to his disgust; but that was the only time, for ever afterwards no sooner did the sheep-dipper and his weird-looking apparatus appear at night, in readiness for the performance on the morrow, than Viper remembered his undignified experience, and, before even the overture of the play commenced, vanished for the day. n.o.body saw him go, or knew where he went, but it was useless to call or whistle, he was nowhere to be found.

I believe the active ingredient of the dip was a preparation of a.r.s.enic, and upon one occasion I lost several sheep after the dipping, presumably from a.r.s.enical poisoning absorbed through the skin. I met the dipper a few days later, and he said with a beaming face that he had "given 'em summat," meaning the parasites. His smiles disappeared when I told him the result, and that the remedy had proved more fatal than the disease. After this experience I used a more scientific dip which was quite as effective and without the element of danger to the sheep.

Entries are to be found in the old parish records of sums paid and chargeable to the parish for killing "woonts" (moles), but later private enterprise was alone responsible. A mole-catcher had been employed throughout the whole of my predecessor's time at Aldington, with a yearly remuneration of 12s. On my arrival he called and asked me to forward the account for the last year to his employer; it ran as follows: "To dastroyin thay woonts, 12s." The man hoped that I should continue the arrangement, but, as I had not seen a mole or a mole-hill on the farm, I told him I would wait, and would send for him if I found them troublesome. As a matter of fact I never saw a mole, or heard of one on my land, throughout the twenty-eight years of my occupation.

Rat-catchers are necessary when rats are very numerous, but rats appear to be very capricious, abounding in some seasons and scarce in others. My particular rat-catcher was not a very highly evolved specimen of humanity; he was thin and hungry-looking with an angular face, bearing a strong resemblance to the creatures against whom he waged warfare; he had a wandering, restless and furtive expression, and appeared to be perpetually on the lookout for his prey, or for manifestations of their cunning and other evil characteristics in the humanity with which he came in contact. His terms were, "no cure, no pay," which impressed one with his confidence in his own remedies; but these were profound secrets, and I had to be content with the a.s.surance that he used nothing harmful to man or domestic animals. He was certainly successful, and effectually cleared the ricks and buildings at one of my outlying places previously badly infested; no dead rats were ever found, but all disappeared very soon after I engaged him.

It is well known that rats will unexpectedly desert quarters which they have occupied for a long time, and travel in large bodies to a new locality. An old man told me that, in walking by the brook-side footpath from Aldington to Badsey, he once encountered one of these armies; they looked so threatening and were in such numbers, that he had to turn aside to allow them to pa.s.s, as they showed no signs of giving way for him.

One morning my bailiff came in to say that a bean-rick had suddenly been taken possession of by an immense number of rats, where shortly before not one could have been found. A man going to the rick-yard quite early had seen the roof of the rick black with them; they were apparently drinking the dew hanging in drops on the straws of the thatch. They were so close together, "so thick," as he expressed it, that one was killed by a stone thrown "into the brown" of them. We sent for the thrashing machine a day or two later, and killed over seventy, and many escaped. Every dead rat was plastered with mud underneath, especially on their tails, and it was evident that they had only just arrived when first seen, and had travelled some distance, probably the evening before, along the clayey overhanging bank of the brook.

We always had great numbers of water-rats about brook; they are no relation of the land-rat, having blunter, noses, shorter tails, and very soft fur. They have not the loathsome appearance of the land-rat, and live, almost entirely, on water-weeds, rushes, and other vegetable matter. It is pretty to see them swimming across a stream; they dive when alarmed, and remain out of sight a long time; they never leave the water or the bank, and are quite innocent of depredations on corn.

In some counties, but not so far as I am aware in Worcestershire, one of the harmless snappers up of unconsidered trifles is the truffle-hunter. At Alton, in Hampshire, one of these men appeared in summer; he carried an implement like a short-handled thistle spud, but with a much longer blade, similar to that of a small spade but narrower; he was accompanied by a frisky little Frenchified dog, unlike any dog one commonly sees, and very alert. The hunting ground was beneath the overhanging branches of beech-trees, growing on a chalky soil; the man encouraged the dog by voice to hunt the surface of the land regularly over; when the dog scented the truffles underneath, he began to scratch, whereupon the implement came into use, and they were soon secured. I have since been sorry that I did not interview this truffle-hunter as to his methods and as to his dog, for I believe he is no longer to be seen in his old haunts. But I did get a pound or two to try, and was disappointed by the absence of flavour. I have since read that the English truffle is considered very inferior to the French, which is used in making _pate de foie gras_.

The wool-stapler makes his rounds as soon as shearing is completed; his first call is to examine the fleeces, and if a deal results a second visit follows for weighing and packing. He is of course well up in market values, probably receiving a telegram every morning, when trade is active, from the great wool-trade centre, Bradford. He is not unwilling to give a special price for quality, but will sometimes stipulate for secrecy as to the sum, because farmers, naturally, compare notes, and everyone thinks himself ent.i.tled to the top price no matter how inferior or badly washed his wool may be. The Bradford stapler has the northern method of speech, which sounds unfamiliar in the midland and southern counties, but it is not so cryptic as that of the Scottish wool trade. The following colloquy is reported as having pa.s.sed between two Scots over a deal in woollen cloth.

_Buyer_. "'Oo?"

_Seller_. "Ay, 'oo."

_Buyer_. "A' 'oo?"

_Seller_. "Ay, a' 'oo."

_Buyer_. "A' _a_ 'oo?"

_Seller_. "Ay, a' _a_ 'oo."

Which, being interpreted, is: "Wool?"--"Yes, wool." "All wool?"--"Yes, all wool." "All one wool?"--"Yes, all one wool."

When the stapler arrives for the weighing he brings his steelyards and sheets; the wool is trod into the sheets, sewn up, and each sheet weighed separately, an allowance being made for "tare" (the weight of the sheet), and for "draught" (1/2 a pound in each tod, or 28 pounds).

This last is a survival of the old method of weighing wool, when only enough fleeces were weighed at a time on the farmer's small machine to come to a tod as nearly as possible. Buyers did not recognize anything but level pounds (no quarters or halves), and consequently they got on the average half a pound over the tod at each separate weighing, gratis.

Owing to the immense importations of Australian wool, the price of English, which at one time was half-a-crown a pound, fell to the miserable figure of sevenpence or thereabouts. When I was in Lincolnshire, the tenant of the farm where I was a pupil clipped 14 pounds each from 200 "hoggs" (yearling sheep), which at 2s. 6d. per pound produced 35s. per sheep, equal to 350, so the fall of three-quarters of the value was a serious loss.

A story is told of a cunning wool buyer in the dim past weighing up wool on an upper floor of some farm premises. As the fleeces pa.s.sed the machine they were thrown down an opening to the floor beneath in readiness for packing. The pile of wool upstairs had been there some time, and was full of rats. As the fleeces were moved a rat would sometimes rush out trying to escape. No farm labourer can resist a rat hunt, so the buyer being left alone beside the still unmoved fleeces, whenever a rat appeared, and the men scattered in every direction in pursuit, he took the opportunity to kick a few fleeces unweighed down the opening. When the owner came to reckon the quant.i.ty the buyer should have had, and compared it with the weight, the fraud was discovered, and the deficiency had to be made good.

I heard of a Hampshire farmer whose wife was anxious for a drawing-room to be added to an inadequate farmhouse, and the tenant with some difficulty persuaded the landlord to make the alteration.

When the work was complete the farmer expressed the great satisfaction of his wife and himself with the addition, and the landlord was anxious to see the new room. Every time he suggested a day, the farmer objected that it would be inconvenient to his wife, or that he himself would be away from home. Time went on, and the landlord, finding it impossible to arrange a day that was not objected to, made a surprise visit, when shooting over the farm. The farmer protested as to the inconvenience, but the owner insisted, and was conducted to the new drawing-room. The door was thrown open, and the room was seen to be stacked from floor to ceiling with wool, without a stick of furniture in the place!

The veterinary surgeon is a necessary, but not very welcome visitor, for, of course, his attendance means disease or accident to the stock.

He is not often mistaken in his diagnosis, though his patient cannot detail his symptoms, or point to the position of the trouble. But the vet is a man to be dispensed with as long as possible when epidemics, like swine fever or foot and mouth disease, are raging in the neighbourhood, because he may be a Government Inspector at such times, and there is great danger to healthy stock if he has been officially employed shortly before on an inspection. We had very little disease at Aldington, being off the highroad, but we had one bad attack of foot and mouth disease which I always thought was brought by a veterinary surgeon. The complaint went all through my dairy cows and fattening bullocks, and soon reduced them to lean beasts, but it was surprising how quickly they picked up again in flesh and resumed their normal appearance. It was curious to notice that, with the cows standing side by side in the sheds, the disease would attack one and miss the next two perhaps, then attack two and miss one, and so on; doubtless it was a matter of predisposition on the part of those affected.

The veterinary lecturer at Cirencester College told me that during the cattle plague in the sixties he had a coat well worth 50 to any veterinary surgeon, so impregnated was it with the infection. This man was fond of scoring off the students, and had a habit at the commencement of each lecture of holding a short _viva voce_ examination on the subject of the last. I remember when the tables were turned upon him by a ready-witted student. The lecturer, who was a superior veterinary surgeon, detailed a whole catalogue of exaggerated symptoms exhibited by an imaginary horse, and selecting his victim added, with a chuckle, "Now, Mr. K., perhaps you will kindly tell us what treatment you would adopt under these circ.u.mstances?" K. was not a very diligent student, and the lecturer expected a display of ignorance, but his antic.i.p.ated triumph was cut short by the reply: "Well, if I had a horse as bad as all that _I_ should send for the vet." The lecturer expostulated, but could get nothing further out of K., and was forced to recognize that the general laugh which followed was against himself.

At a _post-mortem_, however, he was more successful in his choice of a b.u.t.t. A dead horse with organs exposed was the object before the cla.s.s, and the lecturer was asking questions as to their identification. "Now, Mr. Jones, perhaps you will show us where his lungs are?" Jones made an unsuccessful search. "Well, can we see where his heart is?" and so on--all failures. Finally and scornfully, "Well, perhaps you can show the gentlemen where his tail is!"

The village thatcher, Obadiah B., was an ancient, but efficient workman when engaged upon cottages or farm buildings, for ricks require only a comparatively temporary treatment. He was paid by the "square" of 100 feet, and, although he was "no scholard," and never used a tape, he was quite capable of checking by some method I could never fathom my own measurements with it. The finishing touches to his work were adjusted with the skill of an artist and the accuracy of a mathematician; and a beautiful bordering of "buckles" in an elaborate pattern of angles and crosses--"Fantykes" (Van Dycks), his hard-working daughter Sally called them--completed the job. He "reckoned" that each thatching would last at least twenty years, and being well stricken in years, or "getting-up-along" as they say in Hampshire, he would add gloomily, "_I_ shall never do it no more." He was a true prophet, for on every building he thatched for me the work outlived him, and even after the lapse of thirty years is not completely worn out.

Pa.s.sing him and his son in the village street, outside his house, when he was packing fruit for market, I heard him, his voice raised for my benefit, thus admonishing his son who was casually using some of the newer hampers: "Allus wear out the old, fust." But I must not attribute to his son the unfilial retort which another youth made under similar circ.u.mstances, when told to fetch some more hampers from a shed some distance away: "No, father, _you_ fetch them, allus wear out the old fust, you know."

Occasional visitors come with goods for sale in quest of orders, and some are very persistent and difficult to get rid of. A man professing to sell some artificial fertilizer called upon me with a small tin sample box, containing a mixture which emitted a most villainous odour. He sniffed with appreciation at the compound, probably consisting of some nitrogenous material such as wool treated with sulphuric or hydrochloric acid, and began his address. He had not gone far before I remembered a story of a similar person in Hampshire. This man had called upon the leading farmers, and offered them a bargain, explaining that some trucks of artificial manure that he had consigned to Walton Station had been sent by mistake to Alton. He sold many tons in this way without any guarantee as to the a.n.a.lysis, but the buyers found on using it that it was worthless. The seller tried his game on again the following year, without success. One farmer whom he followed from the farm-house to a turnip-field went so far as to show him his hunting-crop, and pointing to the field gate at the same time, intimated that if he did not with all speed place himself outside the latter, he would make unpleasant acquaintance with the former. So now when my caller mentioned a truck of the manure which had come by mistake to Evesham Station, though consigned to Evershot in Somerset, my suspicions were confirmed, and when I innocently remarked, "I think I remember that truck, didn't it go to Alton once in mistake for Walton?" his countenance fell, and he wished me "good-morning" in a hurry.

Hurdles in Worcestershire are generally made of "withy" (willow), and it is interesting to watch the hurdle-maker at work. The poles have first to be peeled, which can be done by unskilled labour, the pole being fixed in an improvised upright vice made from the same material.

Then comes the skilled man, who cuts the poles into suitable lengths, and splits the pieces into the correct widths. Next with an axe he trims off the rough edges, shapes the ends of the rails, and pierces the uprights with a centre-bit. Then he completes the mortise in a moment with a chisel, the rails being laid in position as guides to the size of the apertures. The rails are then driven home into the mortise holes, and he skips backwards and forwards, over the hurdle flat on the ground, as he nails the rails to the heads; two pieces, in the form of a V reversed, connect the rails and keep them in place.

In counties where hazel is grown in the coppices, a wattled or "flake"