Grain and Chaff from an English Manor Part 19

The man demurred, and immediately shouts arose on all sides: "Out!"

"Not out!" "Out!" "Not out!" "Out!" "Not out!" rising _in crescendo_ to a pitch of intense excitement. The boys watching the match, and the other spectators, some agreeing with, and some disputing the verdict, rushed into the centre of the ground, and completely blocked the open s.p.a.ce still shouting vociferously. When the turmoil was at its height the carriage of the Prince and Princess was driven on to the ground; one of the players rushed up excitedly, and asked the Prince to decide the matter. The Prince had not seen the incident, and of course declined, as no doubt he would have done under any circ.u.mstances, to give an opinion. It was impossible to clear the ground and continue the play that evening, and stumps were drawn for the day. Next morning the fielding side offered the disgusted batsman to continue his innings, but he decided to play the game and abide by the umpire's decision. I forget whether Eton or Harrow was in the field at the time, and after this lapse of years it does not matter. The headmaster always sent a notice round, just before the match, to be read to every form, that the boys were desired not to indulge in any "ironical cheering" at Lord's; this was his euphemism for what we called "chaff," and I fear that on this occasion the warning was disregarded even more completely than usual.

As a child, I generally paid a visit to London with my brothers and sisters during the Christmas holidays to see a pantomime, and I remember an occasion when returning from Covent Garden Theatre after a matinee we all--nine of us--walked over Waterloo Bridge and paid nine halfpennies toll--a circ.u.mstance that had never happened before, and never happened again.

In the days before the railway was made between Alton and Farnham the old bailiff on the Will Hall Farm at Alton, who, though quite an elderly man, had never visited London, expressed a wish to visit it for once in his life. His master gave him a holiday and paid his expenses, and the old man drove the ten miles to Farnham Station.

Arrived in London he started to walk over Waterloo Bridge, but the further he got the more astonished he became at the traffic, and began to wonder what "fair" all the people could be going to. Feeling very much out of his element he reached the Strand, and looking up and down he saw still greater crowds of pa.s.sengers and the unending procession of 'buses, cabs, and vans. He became so confused and alarmed that he turned round, went straight back to Waterloo Station, and left by the first available train. He came home disgusted with London, and in an account of the traffic and the people, ended by saying, "I never saw such a place in my life; I couldn't even get a bit of anything to eat until I got back to Farnham." This old man was called "the Great Western": I suppose his bulk and commanding figure were reminiscent of the power and energy of one of the locomotives on that line. He wore a very wide-brimmed straw hat, and a vast expanse of waistcoat with sleeves, without a coat over it, and he had a very determined and masterful habit of speech. Caldecott's sketch of Ready-Money Jack in _Bracebridge Hall_ always recalls him to my mind. He must have been born before the opening of the nineteenth century, for he could remember the stirring events of its early years. Any remark about unusual weather made in his hearing was at once put out of court by his recollections of "eiteen-eiteen" (1818), which seems to have been a very remarkable year for maxima and minima of meteorology. He could remember the high price of wheat during the war which ended at Waterloo, and how his old master, the grandfather of the tenant of the farm in my time, would stand by the men in the barn as they measured up the wheat, bushel by bushel, to fill the sacks, and exclaim as each bushel was poured in, "There goes another guinea, boys!" This would make the price 168s. a quarter; I find the average recorded for 1812 was 126s. 6d., so that it is quite possible that for a time in that year in places 168s. was realized; which leaves us little to grumble at in the price of 80s. during the greatest war in history.

His horizon must have been considerably widened by his brief visit to London; previous to that event it might have been nearly as extensive as that of the hero of a recent story of Pwllheli. Meeting a crony in the town, he remarked that the streets of London would be pretty crowded that day. "How's that?" said his friend. "Why, there's a trip train gone up to-day with fourteen people from Pwllheli!"

Bredon Hill, in the Vale of Evesham, is the direction in which many people look for hints of coming changes of weather.

"When Bredon Hill puts on his cap Ye men of the vale beware of that"

is a well-known proverb referring to the dark curtain of rain clouds obscuring the top, which is generally followed by heavy rain and floods in the Avon meadows and those of all the little streams which join that river. The same purple curtain can be seen on the Cotswolds above Broadway, and is likewise the forerunner of floods in the Vale:

"When you see the rain on the hills You'll shortly find it down by the mills."

There is, too, the beautiful blue hazy distance one sees in very fine weather, which gives a feeling of mystery and remoteness and unexplored possibilities. I lately read somewhere of a man who had pa.s.sed his life without leaving his native village, though he had often looked far away into the blue distance, and longed to start upon a journey of discovery; for its invitation seemed an a.s.surance that in such beauty there must be something better than he had ever experienced in his own home. There came a day when the appeal was so insistent that he braced himself to the effort, and after many weary miles reached the place of his dreams, only to find that the blue distance had disappeared. Meeting a pa.s.ser-by he told him of his journey and its object, and of his disappointment, "Look behind you,"

was the reply. He looked, and behold! over the very spot he had left in the morning--over his own home--the blue haze hung, as a veil of beauty, with its exquisite promise. There is a moral and there is comfort in this tale for him who fancies that he is the victim of circ.u.mstances and surroundings. That is the man who, as my bailiff used to say in harvest, has always got a heavier cut of wheat than his neighbour in the same field, and is always finding himself "at the wrong job."

CHAPTER XX.

CHANGING COURSE OF STREAMS--DEWPONDS--A WET HARVEST--WEATHER PHENOMENA--WILL-O'-THE-WISP--VARIOUS.

"There rolls the deep where grew the tree.

O Earth, what changes hast thou seen!"

--_In Memoriam_.

"With many a curve my banks I fret By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set With willow-weed and mallow.

"I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever."

_The Brook_.

Living so many years in one place I had unusual opportunities, as my rounds nearly always took me beside my brooks, of watching their slowly changing courses. The roots of the pollard willows helped to keep them to their regular path by holding up the banks, but sometimes when an old tree fell into the water it had an opposite result. A fallen tree, reaching partly across the stream, has the immediate effect of damming the flow of the water on the side of its growth and diverting the current towards the opposite bank in a narrowed but more powerful advance, so that the bank is worn away and the beginning of a bend is formed. As the breach increases, the water, momentarily r.e.t.a.r.ded there by the new concavity, rushes forward again in the direction of the bank from which the tree fell. So that a second concavity is produced on that side some little way below the tree, resulting in the slow formation of an extended S-like figure, or hook with a double bend. The collection of rubbish and sediment retained by the fallen tree helps to form a new bank on that side, extending further into the stream than the bank on which the tree originally stood.

As this process continues it is easy to see that a straight stretch of stream will in time a.s.sume a winding course, and the stream will be continually altering its path, so that large areas of flat meadows will be formed, every part of which has at times been the stream's course. How many ages, then, must it have taken to produce the level meadows we see extending for immense distances on either side of our big rivers, and even those adjoining quite small streams? The level surface thus created by the river or brook's course perpetually deflected and reflected, is finally completed by the floods bringing down a deposit of soil in solution, which is precipitated and settles into any surface irregularities left by the wanderings of the stream.

A faint conception of an absolutely illimitable cycle of years, during which the whole extent of visible flat meadow has been again and again eroded and restored, is thus conveyed.

Confirmation of this alteration of their courses by streams is afforded when we cut a main drain through one of these meadows, to carry the water from the connected furrow drains of adjoining arable land. The alluvial soil can be found as deep as the depth of the present brook, free from the stones found in the arable land, and containing, to the same depth as the brook, fresh water sh.e.l.ls similar to those in the brook to-day. There was a bend in course of formation in one of my brooks, where the stump of a tree, whose fall was the starting-point, could be seen standing in the newly-formed ground, a yard or more from the stream when I left, though I can remember when it was so near as almost to touch the water.

If we form an S from a piece of wire, and pinch it together from top to bottom, the loops become so flattened, [S], that one of them may almost unite with the central curve. The same thing often happens in the loops of a brook, and, in time, the stream will complete the junction, forming a short circuit.[2] Thus an island may be formed; or when the old loop opposite the short circuit gets filled up with deposit or falling banks--the water preferring the short circuit--a piece of land may be cut off from one of the former sides of the brook and transferred to the other, so that where the brook is a boundary between two owners or parishes one owner or parish may be robbed and the other owner or parish becomes a receiver of stolen goods. There was an instance of this on the farm I owned and occupied adjoining the Aldington Manor property, and the owner and the tenant of the piece transferred to my side could not reach it without walking through the brook. In this case, however, the tenant had wisely planted the ground with withies, which he managed to get at for lopping when its turn came round every seven years. Thus we have an example of the necessity of the ancient practice of beating the bounds, which, at least before the days of ordnance surveys, was not merely an opportunity for a holiday.

Another proof of the creation of new land by the meanderings of a stream is found in the ancient "carrs" of North Lincolnshire, near Brigg, where the hollowed-out logs of black bog oak, which formed the canoes of the ancient inhabitants, are sometimes discovered many feet below the surface, and long distances from the present course of the Ancholme. These having sunk to the bottom of the river in past ages, and gradually become covered with alluvium, were left behind as the river changed its course. In some cases however these canoes may have sunk to the bottom of the water when it formed a lake, and the lake having gradually silted up, the river receded to something like its present width.

The floods in the Vale of Evesham from the Avon and even from my brooks, often converted the adjoining flat meadows into lakes, and they rose so suddenly after heavy rains or the melting of deep snowfalls on the hills, that they were attended with danger to the stock.

In the summer of 1879 one of these sudden floods occurred, and people standing on Evesham bridge, saw fallen trees and hay-c.o.c.ks floating down the stream. A pollard willow was noticed with a crew of about twenty land rats, which had found refuge there until the tree itself was lifted by the rising water and carried down the stream; and a floating hay-c.o.c.k supported a man's jacket, his jar of cider, and his "shuppick." The local word "shuppick," a corruption of "sheaf-pike,"

means a pike used for loading the sheaves of wheat in the harvest field on to the waggon, and is the "fork" in general use at hay-making. During another summer flood the whole of the pleasure ground at Evesham, beside the Avon, was under water several feet deep; the water poured in at the lower windows of the adjoining hotel, and the proprietor's casks of beer and cider in the cellars, ready for the regatta, were lifted from their stands and b.u.mped against walls and ceilings.

Every parish has its Council in these days, and in country places almost every other person one meets is a councillor of some sort, and inclined to be proud of the distinction. These Councils are excellent safety-valves for parochial malcontents who thus harmlessly let off superfluous steam which might otherwise ruffle the abiding calm of peaceful inhabitants, but their powers are really very limited. In a village in Worcestershire where an approach road crossed a brook by a ford, during floods the current was sometimes so strong as to const.i.tute a danger to horses and carts. The village pundits therefore, in council duly a.s.sembled, considered the matter, and after an extended debate the following resolution was carried unanimously, "That a notice board be erected on the spot bearing the inscription: When this board _is covered with water_ it is dangerous to attempt to cross the ford."

The numerous brooks in the Vale of Evesham supply ample water for the stock, but in more elevated parts, especially on the chalk Downs of Suss.e.x, Hants, Wilts, and Dorset, provision is made for an artificial water supply by what are called "dewponds." A shallow saucer-shaped depression is dug out on the open Down, the bottom being made water-tight by puddling with a well-rammed layer of impervious clay.

The first heavy rainfall fills the pond, and, the water being colder than the air, the dew or mist condenses on its surface sufficiently, in ordinary weather, to maintain the supply. In a dry time the sheep can always reach the water, the pond having no banks, by the shelving formation of the bottom. Sometimes a few trees are allowed to grow round it; they also act as condensers, and their drip helps to fill the pond. It is only in an abnormal drought that these dewponds really fail, and a thunderstorm, followed by ordinary weather, will soon refill them. Gilbert White, in _The Natural History of Selborne_, refers to these ponds in a very interesting letter on the subject, including details of condensation by trees, in which he gives an instance of a particular pond, high up on the Down, 300 feet above his house, and situated in such a position that it was impossible for it to receive any water from springs or drainage, which "though never above three feet deep in the middle, and not more than thirty feet in diameter, and containing, perhaps, not more than two or three hundred hogsheads of water, yet never is known to fail, though it affords drink for three hundred or four hundred sheep, and for at least twenty head of large cattle besides."

The natural well-water in the Vale of Evesham is exceedingly hard, and in the town and some villages was formerly much contaminated. After great opposition from obstructive ratepayers, a splendid supply was obtained from the Cotswolds above Broadway, about six miles away, of much softer and really pure spring water. It comes in pipes by gravitation, so there is no expense of pumping; but it was difficult to get recalcitrant ratepayers to lay the water on from the mains to their houses, as that part of the cost had to be borne by them individually; and, before compulsion could be resorted to, the Council had to prove contamination of the wells and close them. To get the evidence samples were submitted to a London a.n.a.lyst, and they were invariably condemned. One of the Councillors suggested sending, with a number of well samples, a sample of the new supply "for a fad." The samples were numbered, but had no other distinguishing mark, and in due course the usual condemnations were received, including that of the new town supply!

During the wet harvest of 1879, when what was called by townspeople the agricultural depression, was becoming acute, it was impossible to get a whole day on which wheat could be carried. The position was serious, because the grain was sprouting in the sheaves in the field, and time after time a fairly dry Sat.u.r.day would have allowed carrying the following day, though Monday was always as wet as ever. At last at Aldington we faced the situation and decided to proceed with the work whenever possible, Sunday or no Sunday. A fine drying Sat.u.r.day occurred, and my bailiff told the men what we proposed, adding that we did not wish anyone to help who had scruples as to the day. They all appeared on Sunday morning, a brilliant day, except one "conscientious objector," who, as I heard later, spent most of the day at the public-house. We got up two ricks from about ten acres, which eventually proved to be some of the driest wheat we had that year, and which I was able to sell for seed at a good price, to go into districts where no dry seed wheat could be found.

My old vicar was somewhat scandalized at this Sunday work, and some of my neighbours fancied themselves shocked, but a day or two later I happened to meet another clergyman friend, who farmed a little himself. "I was _so_ pleased," he said, "to hear that you were carrying wheat last Sunday; when I was preaching I was strongly disposed to conclude by telling my people--'Now you have been to church, go home to your dinners, and then off with your jackets and carry wheat for the rest of the day.'" Next Sunday all my neighbours were busy with their wheat, but I had managed to complete my harvest during the previous week, on the 8th of October, quite a month or six weeks later than usual, and an extraordinary contrast to the very dry year 1868, when all the corn on the farm, I was told, was carried before the last day of July.

I attended a neighbour's sale that autumn; the wet seasons and the low prices had been too much for him, and he was leaving for the United States; his rick-yard was empty, all the corn sold, and nothing but straw left. I heard him remark, "Folks are saying that I'm very backward with my payments, but I'm very forward with my thrashing, anyway!" Before the following spring nearly all the rick-yards were empty, and wheat-ricks, it was said, were as scarce as churches--one in each parish. The situation was summed up later in a phrase which pa.s.sed into a proverb: "In 1879 farmers lived on faith, in 1880 they are living on hope, and in 1881 they will have to live on charity."

The att.i.tude of the towns was one of apathy and indifference, like that of the General in _Bracebridge Hall_, which, published in 1822, proves how history repeats itself in agricultural as in other matters:

"He is amazingly well-contented with the present state of things, and apt to get a little impatient at any talk about national ruin and agricultural distress. 'They talk of public distress,' said the General this day to me at dinner, as he smacked a gla.s.s of rich burgundy and cast his eyes about the ample board: 'They talk of public distress, but where do we find it, sir? I see none; I see no reason anyone has to complain. Take my word for it, sir, this talk about public distress is all humbug!'"

At Evesham, long before the depression grew into a debacle, the shadows of coming events could easily be detected. There was the disappearance of the long rows of farmers' conveyances at the inns in the town on market-days; there was the eclipse of shops--for other than necessities--such as a little fish shop, opposite the corner at the cross roads; a corner where much business was formerly transacted in the open street, and where I myself have sold by sample some thousands of sacks of wheat. A tempting little shop it used to be, displaying shining Severn salmon; and it was here that the farmers, after the market, obtained the supplies commanded by the missus at home.

And there was the abandonment of the Corn Market proper, for the cla.s.s of farmers who survived hated to transact their business indoors. The attendance of millers and dealers, except of those who had cargoes of foreign corn at Gloucester or Bristol to dispose of, became irregular.

Sales of farm stock and implements took place in every village on farms which had pa.s.sed from father to son for generations, coupled with the sacrifice of valuable implements and machinery for want of buyers. There followed the stage when landowners who could find no tenants, and had heavily mortgaged estates, essayed to make the best of them by laying away the arable land to pasture, undertaking the management themselves with, perhaps, an old broken-down tenant as bailiff. The politicians and the general public did not apprehend the danger of the situation, in spite of innumerable warnings, until the German submarines were sending our foreign food supplies to the bottom of the sea; and now that the immediate danger of starvation has pa.s.sed, they appear already to have lapsed again into an att.i.tude of apathy.

We hear the blessed word "reconstruction" on every side, but the only official propositions for the permanent establishment of agricultural prosperity that I have heard are utterly inadequate. It is ridiculous to suppose that a few thousand acres of special crops, like tobacco, for instance, only possible in favoured spots, can in any way compensate for the loss of millions of acres of arable land under rotations of corn and green crops. Under present conditions nothing is more certain than the abandonment of arable land as such; and it is folly to talk of novel systems of transport for a dwindling output, or of building labourers' cottages at an unjustifiable cost, which are never likely to be wanted by a dying industry.

Among my experiences of abnormal weather, I have a note of a remarkable summer flood on July 21, 1875, when my hay was lying in the meadows beside the brooks, and had to be removed to higher ground in pouring rain to prevent its disappearance with the current. On the following day, July 22, the highest flood since 1845 occurred at Evesham.

October 14, 1877, was memorable for the most terrific south-west gale that happened in all the years I pa.s.sed at Aldington; thirteen trees, mostly old apple trees and elms, were blown down, including the splendid veteran "Chate boy" pear tree at Blackminster, an exceedingly sad and irreparable loss. The gale blew hardest in special tracks, the course of which could be followed by the destruction of trees and branches in distinct lanes, cut through woods and plantations.

The winter of 1880-1881 was very severe, the mean temperature of January, 1881, being 27.8 degrees F., the coldest January since 1820.

Ten years later, 1890-1891, another very prolonged winter occurred: the frost began on the 6th of December, and, with scarcely a break, continued till well into February. The feature of this frost was the fine settled weather, and the warmth of the midday sun in the brilliant air, when skaters could sit on the river banks and enjoy their rest and lunch in its rays. I took my elder daughter back to school at Richmond at the end of January, and in London we saw the Thames choked by huge hummocks of ice, on which people were crossing the river. An ox was roasted whole on the Avon at Evesham, and, when the frost broke up, the ice on our millpond was 17 inches thick.

Another great frost happened in 1894-1895, beginning late in December, and lasting till the end of February, with a single intervening week of thaw; and in March the ground, in places, was too hard to plough.

It was the only time that I was completely at a loss to find work for my men; all the carting was finished in the early days of the frost, and all the thrashing possible followed; ploughing and all working of the land, or draining, were impracticable. The men, seeing that there would be no employment for them until the frost broke up, told me that if they might get what wood they could from fallen trees in the brook, and if I would lend them horses and carts to get it home, they would be glad to work in that way for themselves for a time. Just as they had cleared both brooks from end to end of the farm which occupied them about ten days, the thaw came and I was able to find them plenty to do.

We suffered very little from droughts at Aldington, the land was naturally so retentive of moisture, but 1893 was a dry year, not easily forgotten; no rain fell from early in March to July 13; the hay crop was the lightest in remembrance, and straw was so short and scarce that the hay-ricks of the following year, 1894, had to go unthatched until the harvest of that year provided the necessary straw.

The spring of 1895 was remarkable for a plague of the caterpillars of the winter-moth, due to the destruction of insect-eating birds by the great frost; the caterpillars devoured the young leaves of the plum-trees, so that whole orchards were completely stripped. The balance between insectivorous birds and caterpillar life was destroyed for a time, and the caterpillars conquered the plum-trees. In 1917, during the persistent north-east blasts of February, March, and part of April, the destruction of birds was terrible; all the t.i.t tribe suffered greatly, and the charming little golden-crested wren, which here in the Forest was quite common, has scarcely been seen since.

Caterpillars again were a plague in my apple trees that spring, but were not really destructive, and in the autumn the apples escaped their usual punishment from the birds and wasps. t.i.ts are often very troublesome; they peck holes in the fruit, apparently in search of the larvae of the codlin moth, leaving an opening for wasps and flies. I find the berries of the laurel, which is a species of cherry, very attractive to blackbirds, and as long as there are any left they seem to prefer them to the apples. In 1895 cuckoos came to the rescue of my young plum orchard; there were dozens of them at work on the nine acres at once, and they must have cleared away an immense number of the grubs.

The most remarkable season we have had since I left Aldington was the great drought of 1911. There was no rain here worth mention from June 22, the Coronation of King George V., until August 30, and the pastures on this thin land were burnt up. On August 30 we had some friends for tennis, and we had not been playing long before a mighty cloud-burst occurred; the rain fell in torrents. "It didn't stop to rain, it tumbled down," as my men used to say, and in about half an hour the lawn was a sheet of water, the ground being so hard, that it could not soak away. It was all over in an hour, and a neighbour with a rain-gauge registered 0.66 of an inch of rain, equal to 66 tons on an acre, or 330 tons on my five acres.

One of my ambitions has always been to see a Will-o'-the-wisp, and I am still hoping; but that hot summer, had I known it at the time, they were quite common within an easy walk of my house in the New Forest.

There was some correspondence on the subject in _The Observer_, and the following is extracted from one of the letters:

"As none of your correspondents seem to be aware of a comparatively recent instance, I write to say that there were enough indubitable Will-o'-the-wisps to convince the most incredulous during the extremely hot weather of July, 1911.