I remember, too, when some elderly women, with a younger one, were hay-making, one of the old ladies, dragging the big "heel-rake" behind the waggon in course of loading—always rather a tough job—tried to induce the younger woman to take her place with, "Here, Sally, thee take a turn at it; thee be a better 'ooman nor I be." My bailiff, overhearing, at once interposed: "Be she a better 'ooman than thee, Betsy, ov a Saturday night [pay-night]?"
Hard-and-fast laws and fixed prices for agricultural labour will be found very difficult to maintain as to piecework; no wage board can fix just prices, because conditions are so variable. Of two men cutting corn on separate plots in the same field, the one at 12s. an acre may really earn more moneyper diemthan another man at 15s. an acre on the other side of the field, owing to the difference in the weight of the crop or its condition, it being, perhaps, erect in the first case, and laid by heavy storms in the second.
There is, too, a vast difference in the value of boys' work and usefulness; one may easily be worth double another, yet no difference is allowable by the new law; or one may demoralize another, so that two are less effective than one. A good old saying puts the matter very plainly: "One boy's a boy, two boys are half a boy, and three boys are no boy at all!"
It is, in fact, ridiculous for townspeople, lawyers, and manufacturers to legislate for the labour of the farm; they do not understand that indoor labour in the workshop or factory, under regular conditions and with unvarying materials, is totally different from labour out of doors, in constantly changing conditions of season, weather, and the resulting crops dealt with. An old maxim of the Worcestershire labourer who, without a fixed place, took on piece-work at specially busy times, will confirm this: "Go to a good farmer for wheat-hoeing, and to a bad one for harvesting." I may explain that the fields of the good farmer are clean and nearly free from weeds, so that hoeing is a comparatively light job; but the same, or nearly the same, price per acre is paid by the bad farmer, whose corn is overrun with weeds, entailing much more time and harder work. On the other hand, the good farmer's wheat crop is much heavier than that of the bad, and, the prices for cutting being again very similar, more moneyper diemcan be earned at harvest on the farm of the latter.
It is a sound old Worcestershire saying that "the time to hoe is when there are no weeds"—apparently a paradox, but the meaning is simple: when no weeds are to be seen above ground there are always millions of tiny seedlings just below the surface ready to increase and multiply wonderfully with a shower of rain; if attacked at the seedling stage, these can be slaughtered in battalions, with far greater ease and efficacy than when they become deep-rooted and established, and dominate the crop.
I have heard of farmers to whom pay-night was a sore trial; one such was frequently known to mount his horse and gallop away just before his men appeared: how he settled eventually I do not know. Some farmers will pay out of doors on their rounds, having a rooted objection to business of any kind under a roof; and one small farmer, I was told, always passed the cash to his men behind his back so that he might not have the agony of parting actually before his eyes.
A labourer is supposed to come to work in his master's time and go home in his own, thus sharing the necessary loss, and, as a rule, they are fairly punctual; but one defaulter in this particular will waste many moments of a whole gang working together, as it seems to be etiquette not to begin till they are all present. I have often heard, too, sarcastic comparisons made between the day-man and "the any-time-of-day man."
The cottagers have their feuds, and the use of joint wash-houses or baking-ovens between two or more adjoining cottages is a frequent source. I have had excited wives of tenants coming to me at unseasonable hours to settle these differences, and I found it a very difficult business to reconcile the disputants. I could only visit thelocus in quoand arrange fixed and separate days and regulations; but though the wisdom of Solomon may administer justice in a dispute, it is impossible to ensure a really peaceful solution that will endure.
Sometimes feuds, originating in such or similar causes, were maintained for years by neighbours living with only a 9-inch party wall between them, and daily meetings outside, to the extent of not even "passing the time of day." At last, however, in a day of distress to one, the heart of the unafflicted other would melt, and after an offer of help, or actual assistance, kind relations would be once more established. Or a peace offering, in the shape of a dish of good pig-meat, sent over with a kind message, would restore more genial conditions, and they would return to happy and neighbourly familiarity.
I once employed an old Dorset labourer, a tall, slim, aristocratic figure, with an elegant, refined nose to match; he bore the well-known name of an ancient and distinguished Dorset family, and I have no doubt was well descended. He was decidedly a canny, not to say crafty, man. I gave him a holiday at Whitsuntide to visit his old home, but he overran the time agreed upon and returned some days late. Before I could begin the rebuke I proposed to administer, he produced a charming photograph of a ruined abbey near his old locality, and handed it to me as a present. "I thought upon you, master, while I was away, and knowing as you was fond of ancient things I've brought you this picture." I was completely disarmed, and the rebuke had to be postponedsine die.
As I was talking one day to my bailiff—one of the men who lived a mile away standing near—he said: "Tom, here, is always the first man to arrive in the morning; I have never known him to be late." I congratulated Tom, and asked what time he went to bed: "Oh, about seven o'clock!" He was, in fact, a lonely old bachelor, and, being "no scholard," it saved lights and firing to be early to bed.
This man, like many villagers, had very vague ideas of geography. To save the trouble of cooking, he lived largely on American tinned beef, and got chaffed about it by his fellow-workers. "How be you getting on with the 'Merican biff?" Tom was asked. "Oh," said he, "never no more 'Merican biff for me." "How's that, Tom?" "Why, the other day I found a trouser-button in it!" The point of this story lies in the fact that the Russo-Turkish war was proceeding at the time.Tempora mutantur, we were then encouraging Turkey against Russia, though the latter had declared war to avenge the atrocities in Bulgaria of which the Turks were guilty, while in the recent struggle the position was almost exactly reversed.
There was then a violent militant feeling here in Britain, and excited crowds were singing:
"We don't want to fight but, by Jingo, if we do, We've got the ships, we've got the men, We've got the money too."
Hence the expression "Jingoism," which we often hear to-day, though, perhaps, the origin is now almost forgotten.
It is not unusual to see villagers, as married couples, complete contrasts to each other in appearance and character—one fat and jolly, the other thin and miserable; one happy and contented, the other grumbling and morose; one open-hearted and generous, the other close and parsimonious. In matrimony people are said to choose their opposites, and possibly, as time goes on, the difference in their appearance and dispositions becomes still more definitely developed.
The labourer understands sarcasm and makes use of it himself, but irony is often lost upon him. Passing an old man on a pouring wet day, I greeted him, adding, "Nice morning, isn't it?" He stared, hesitated, and then, "Well, it would be if it wasn't for the rain!" I only remember one surly man—not one of my workers or tenants. He was scraping a very muddy road, and I remarked, for something to say, "Makes it look better, doesn't it?" All I got in reply was, "I shouldn't do it if it didn't!"
It is important, in managing a mixed lot of farm labourers, to find out each man's special gift, making him the responsible person when the time or opportunity arrives for its application. There are men, excellent with horses, who have no love of steam-driven machinery, andvice versa; and there are men who are capable at small details, yet unable to take comprehensive views.
Responsibility is the life-blood of efficiency, and men can always be found upon whom responsibility will act like a charm, producing quickened perception, interest, foresight, economy, resource, industry, and all the characteristics that responsibility demands. Put the square peg in the square hole, the round peg in the round hole; show the man you have confidence in him, teach him to act on his own initiative in all the lesser matters that concern his job, coming only to the master in those larger considerations to which the latter are subordinate, and my experience is that your confidence will not be betrayed, and that he will save you an immense amount of tiresome detail.
The most difficult man to deal with is the over-confident "know-all"; he is always ready to oppose experience—often dearly bought—with his superior knowledge, he can suggest a quicker or a cheaper way of doing everything, and in his last place he "never saw" your system followed. He is the penny-wise and pound-foolish individual, and his methods are "near enough." It has been said that at twenty a man knows everything, at forty he is not quite so sure, and at sixty he is certain that he knows nothing at all; but there are exceptions even to this rule, who continue all their lives thinking more and more of their own opinions, and completely satisfied with their own methods. On the other hand, the master will always find, among the more experienced, men from whom much is to be learnt; they are generally diffident and not too ready to hazard an opinion, but when consulted they can give very valuable help. I willingly acknowledge my indebtedness to my old hands, their well-founded convictions that were the fruit of long years of practical experience, and their readiness to impart them in times of doubt and difficulty.
Just as bad-tempered grooms make nervous, bad-tempered horses; rough and noisy cattle-men, fidgety cows; ill-trained dogs and savage shepherds, sheep wild and difficult to approach; so does the bad-tempered, impatient, or slovenly master make men with the same bad qualities, when a smile or a kind word will bring out all that is good in a man and produce the best results in his work.
I began my farming with four dear old women, working on the land, when wanted for light jobs; the youngest must have been fifty at least. They received the time-honoured wage of tenpence a day, and worked, or talked, about eight hours. They loved to work near the main road, discussing the natural history of the occupants of passing carts or carriages. They knew something comic, tragic, or compromising about everybody, and expressed themselves with epigrammatic force. A farmer occupant of a neighbouring farm in long-past days, was a favourite subject of such recollections. After relating how "he were a random duke," and recalling his habits, one old lady would conclude the recital with an account of his last days, adding, as if everything was thereby finally condoned:
"But there, 'e was just as nice a carpse as ever I see, and I was a'most minded to put his paddle [thistle-spud] beside him in his coffin, for he was always a-diggin' and a-delvin' about with it."
One member of this quartet, when ill, had a dish of minced mutton sent her in the hopes of tempting her appetite. She eyed the gift with disfavour, and announced with scorn that "she preferred to chew her meat herself!"
In due course these old ladies retired from active service and younger women took their places; women were especially necessary in the hop-yards for the important operation of tying the selected bines to the poles with rushes and pulling out those which were superfluous. It was difficult, at first, to accustom them to the fact that the hop always twines the way of the sun, whilst the kidney bean takes the opposite course. And there was a problem which greatly exercised their minds: How were they to reach the hops at the tops of the poles—14 feet from the ground—when the time came? It did not occur to them that it was possible to cut the bine and pull up the pole. They soon became very quick and expert at the tying, and their well-worn wedding-rings, telling of a busy life, would flash brightly in the sunshine as they tenderly coaxed the brittle bines round the base of the poles, securing them with the rush tied in a special slip-knot, so that it easily expanded as the bine enlarged.
Women are splendid at all kinds of light farm work whenever deftness and gentle touch are required, such as hop-tying and picking, or gathering small fruit like currants, raspberries, and strawberries; but I do not consider them in the least capable of taking the place of men in outdoor work which demands muscular strength and endurance and the ability to withstand severe heat or bitter cold or wet ground under foot, through all the varying seasons. Village women have, too, their home duties to attend to, and it is most important that their men-folk should be suitably fed and their houses kept clean and attractive.
On the farm of my son-in-law, in Warwickshire, I have seen something of the work of land girls, to the number of seventy or more, for whom he provided a well-organized camp with a competent lady Captain; and I know how useful they proved in the emergency caused by the War, but I still adhere to my former conclusion as to the more strenuous forms of farm labour, without in the least detracting from my admiration for the courage and patriotism that brought them forward.
I know one woman, however, who quite successfully undertakes very strenuous garden work, including digging, having been inured to it at a very early age. If she could be spared from her own work to take the position of instructress for young girls determined to make the land their chief employment, they would be saved a vast amount of unnecessary fatigue and labour by learning the art of using spades, forks, hoes, and rakes in the way that experience teaches, relying more upon the weight and designed capabilities of the tool to do the work than upon their own untrained muscles.
We could always get a supply of excellent maids for house-work from among the village families; they began very young, coming in for a few hours daily to help the regular staff, and, as these left or got married, they were ready trained to take their places. These girls were quite free from the self-importance of the present-day domestic, but I remember one nice village girl about whom we inquired as a likely maid who, it then appeared, was engaged to marry a thriving small tradesman. The girl's mother, being over-elated at her daughter's apparently brilliant prospects of independence, rejected the proposal with some hauteur, adding that her daughter "would soon be keeping her own maid." I fear, however, that she was disappointed, as the course of true love did not run smooth.
We preferred a married man as shepherd, because, when I had only a few cows, he combined his duties with those of cowman; and, bringing in the milk and doing the churning, he was much about the back premises. On one occasion, however, I engaged a young bachelor, partly because he replied, with a knowing smile, to a question as to whether he was married, that he dared say he could be if he liked—which I optimistically took to amount to an announcement of his engagement.
Time went on and he remained a single man, but it was observable that he lingered on his milky way, and was more in evidence in the dairy than his duties appeared to warrant. We concluded that he was attracted by the cook. One day my wife said to another maid: "I can't think why the shepherd spends so much time in the house. I suppose cook is the attraction?" The girl blushed, hesitated, and looked down, but finally courageously murmured: "Please, mum, it's me, mum!" They were married in due course, and we lost an excellent servant.
Some of the village women and girls filled up spare moments with "gloving"; the large kid-glove manufacturers in Worcester supplied the material, cut into shape, and a stand, with a kind of vice divided into spaces the exact size of each stitch, which held the work firmly while the stitching was done by hand; they grew very quick at this work, and turned out the gloves with beautifully even stitches, but I don't think they could earn much at it in a day, and it must have been rather monotonous.
I was interested to read in Mr. Warde Fowler'sKingham Old and Newan account of a peculiar ceremony—called "Skimmington," by Mr. Hardy, in hisMayor of Casterbridge—which took place in Kingham village. I have known of two similar cases, one in Surrey and one at Aldington, under the name of "rough music." The Kingham case was quite parallel with that at Aldington, being a demonstration of popular disapproval of the conduct of a woman resident, in matters arising out of matrimonial differences.
The outraged neighbours collect near the dwelling of the delinquent, having provided themselves with old trays, pots and pans, and anything by means of which a horrible din can be raised, and proceed to serenade the offender. To be the subject of such a demonstration is regarded as a signal disgrace and a most emphatic mark of popular odium. Mr. Warde Fowler tells me, on the authority of a German book on marriage, etc., that "the same sort of din is made at marriage in some parts of Europe to drive evil spirits away from the newly married pair." Possibly, therefore, the custom among our own villagers may have originated with the same idea, and they may formerly have taken the charitable view that evil spirits were responsible for evil deeds, and that their exorcism was a neighbourly duty.
The holiday outings I gave my men were aquid pro quofor some hours of overtime in the hay-making, and included a day's wages, all expenses, and a supply of food. They generally went to a large town where an agricultural show was in progress, but I think the sea trips to Ilfracombe and Weston-super-Mare were the most popular, offering as they did much greater novelty. I have a vivid recollection of the preparation of the rations on the previous night: a vast joint of beef nicely roasted and got cold before operations commenced, my wife and daughter making the sandwiches, while I cut up the beef in the kitchen, sometimes in my shirt-sleeves on a hot summer night; mountains of loaves of bread, great slices of cake, and pounds of cheese, completed the provisions. The rations were wrapped in separate papers and placed in a hipbath, covered with a cloth, and finally kept in a cool building, whence each man took his portion at early dawn. For the sea trips the train took the party to Gloucester and Sharpness, where they embarked upon the steamer.
Many and thrilling were the tales I heard next day; the sea was fairly smooth until they reached the Bristol Channel, but then, if they met a south-west wind, the vessel began to roll, and jovial faces looked thoughtful. I must not dwell upon the delightful horrors of the voyage on such occasions; they were accepted with good-humour and regarded as part of the show, but it was curious that not one of the narrators himself suffered the fate that he so graphically described as the portion of the others. Arrived at their destination, they inspected the town, watched the people on the piers and parades, and the children playing on the sands. The latter created the greatest interest, busy with their spades and buckets, or, as one man expressed it, "little jobs o' draining and summat!"
At Christmas the village children always came in small gangs to sing, or rather chant, a peculiar and very ancient seasonable greeting:
"I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year,A pocket full of money and a cellar full of beer,A good fat pig to last you all the year.May God bless all friends near!A merry, merry Christmas and a happy New Year."
"Last week came one to the county townTo preach our poor little army down."—Maud.
Though machinery has lightened the labour of manual workers to some extent, it entails much more trouble upon masters and foremen, for breakages are frequent and always occur at the busiest time. What with mowers, reapers, thrashing machines, chaff-cutters, root-pulpers, and grain-mills run by steam-power or in connection with horse-gears; hop-washers, separators, and other delicately adjusted novelties, the master must of necessity be something of a mechanic himself. I doubt if machinery is really quite the advantage claimed by theorists and reconstructionists at the present day. Even the thrashing machine, universally adopted, presents disadvantages in comparison with the ancient flail, generally regarded as obsolete, though still to be found in occasional use by the smallholder or allotment occupier. In former times the farmer reserved his thrashing by hand, for the most part, for winter work during severe frost or wet weather, when nothing could be done outside. The immense barns, which still exist, were filled almost to the roof at harvest; thatching was not necessary, and every sheaf was absolutely safe from rain as soon as it was under cover. Continuous winter work was provided for the men, and a daily supply of fresh straw for chaff-cutting and bedding, besides fresh chaff and rowens or cavings for stock throughout the winter. With the thrashing machine in use for ricks, thatching is a necessity, and is often difficult to arrange in the stress of harvest; the machine and engine demand a day's work for two teams of horses to fetch them, and the cartage and expense of much coal, now so dear. On a small farm extra hands have to be engaged, the straw has to be stacked or carried to the barns, and the same applies to the chaff and rowens. If the weather is damp, straw, chaff, and rowens get stale, mouldy, and unpalatable to the stock, a heavy charge is made for the hire of the machine and the machine men, and the latter require food and drink or payment instead. The machine breaks and bruises many grains of corn, which are thereby damaged for seed or malting, whereas the less urgent flail leaves them intact.
The sound of the thrashing machine gives an impression to outsiders of brisk and remunerative work, but it is cheerful to the farmer only when high prices are ruling. Far otherwise was it for many years before the War, when corn-growers heard only its moaning, despondent note, telling anything but a flattering tale, only varied by an occasional angry growl, when irregular feeding choked its satiated appetite.
From the aesthetic standpoint uncouth and noisy machines, such as mowers and reapers, cannot be compared to a lusty team of men with scythes, in their white shirts, backed by the flowering meadows; or a sunny field of busy harvesters facing a golden wall of corn, and leaving behind them the fresh-shorn stubble dotted with sheaves and nicely balanced shocks. The rattle of the machines, too, is discordant and out of harmony with the peaceful countryside.
It is related of Ruskin that, hearing the insistent rattle of a mowing machine in a meadow adjoining his home by the beautiful Coniston Water, and his sense of the fitting being outraged, he interviewed the owner, and, by an offer to pay the trifling difference between machine and hand labour, induced him to discontinue the annoyance.
As to the relative cost of machine and hand wheat-cutting, quite early in my farming I obtained the opinion of a distinguished farmer, then well known on the Council of the Royal Agricultural Society, Mr. Charles Randell, of Chadbury, near Evesham, on the subject: "If you can get a good crop," he said, "cut, tied, and stocked by hand at anything like 15s. an acre, don't use a machine. If the corn is ripe it knocks out and wastes quite a bushel of wheat per acre" (worth at that time about 5s., now nearer 9s. or 10s.). "I always bring out my machines, and have them oiled and made ready,but I don't want to use them."
In a wet harvest the machine is unworkable on sticky clay soil, and after a wet summer, when the corn is badly laid and twisted, it makes very poor work, cutting off the ears and scattering them, and leaving a quantity of uncut and untidy straw on the ground.
In my own case my equanimity was never disturbed by a reaping machine, with its unwieldy tossing arms, on my land, for I had to find employment for my full staff of regular hands, specially required for the much more important hop-picking a little later, and it pleased me that they should get the extra pay for harvest work as well.
The cream separator, I admit, is a wonderful invention, and its hum is not unmusical; it provides fresh skim milk for the calves and pigs morning and night, which, as well as the cream, is thoroughly cleansed in the process. The aeration of the skim milk leaves it a most wholesome and nourishing article of diet for the villagers if they could be made to understand its value, and that the removal of the cream takes away only the fat (heating material), leaving the bone and muscle making constituents in the milk. I could never induce my village folk to accept this rudimentary proposition; they fancied that all the goodness was gone with the cream, and though I offered the skim milk at the nominal price of one halfpenny a quart, very few would send their children to fetch it, though they mostly lived within a hundred yards of the dairy.
The hay or straw elevator is one of the greatest helps, saving much heavy overhand labour in rick-building. An old labourer, pointing to one, with great appreciation, on a farm I was visiting, said: "That'sa machine as will be always kept in the dry and took care on." He spoke from experience of the arduous work of unloading and the passing of heavy weights, sometimes from the bed of the waggon to the summit of the rick; for, as my bailiff often said, "Nobody knows so well where the shoe pinches as the man who has to wear it."
Steam has not done all that was expected of it as an agricultural slave. The steam plough is not a success on heavy land where the ridges are high and irregular in width, and even the steam cultivator has to be used with caution lest the soil should be carried from the ridges to the furrows, and the "squitch" (couch) buried to a depth at which it is difficult to eradicate. The great convenience of steam cultivation is that full advantage can be taken of a short spell of hot, dry weather for fallowing operations, and the soil is left so hollow that it soon bakes and kills the weeds. I fully sympathize with Tennyson's,Northern Farmer, Old Style:
"But summon 'ull come ater meä mayhap wi' 'is kittle o' steämHuzzin' an' maäzin' the blessed feälds wi' the Devil's oän teäm";
for, except on a large farm with immense fields, the ponderous and ungainly steam, tackle gives one a sensation of intrusion. Such a field can be found on a farm between Evesham and Alcester; it contains 300 acres. The occupier, speaking of it, mentioned that it was all wheat that year except one corner. To a question as to the size of the corner, it transpired that it was 50 acres, and growing peas. For comparison there is a story of a Devonshire farmer who said he had been very busy one winter making four fields into one. "Then you've got a big field," said a friend. "Yes," was the reply; "it's just four acres."
When the farm labourer was enfranchised in 1885 he became an important member of the electorate. Candidates and canvassers alike had a much more strenuous time than ever before, the former were constrained to hold meetings in every village, and the latter were obliged to visit nearly every cottage. The late Sir Richard Temple after a distinguished career in India, became Conservative candidate for our division. The doctrine of "three acres and a cow," in opposition to every tenet of rural economy, as well as the division of the land among the labourers, were at the time paraded by theorists and paid agitators, as bribes to purchase the votes of the new electors, and as ensuring the salvation of the rural population, which was then beginning to suffer from unemployment, resulting from the destruction of corn-growing by foreign competition.
The more credulous of the labourers were excited and unsettled by the alluring prospect of independence thus held out to them, and it was reported that some went so far as to survey the fields around their villages and select the plots they proposed to cultivate, and that others took baskets to the poll in which to bring home the all-powerful magic of the mysterious vote! Among the new voters in a neighbouring village, a man of very decided views found it puzzling to decide by which candidate they were most nearly represented, and, determined to make no mistake at the poll, he consulted a fellow-labourer, inquiring: "Which way be the big uns a-going, because I be agin they?"
The Squire of an adjoining parish met an old villager with whom he had always been on good terms; after mutual greetings, the man sympathised: "Ibesorry for you, Squire." "Why?" was the rejoinder. "Yes, I be regular sorry for you, Squire, that I be.." "What's the matter?" asked the Squire. "Ay! about this here land; 'tis to be divided amongst we working men." "Indeed," said the Squire; "but look here, after a bit, some of you won't want to cultivate it any longer, and some, with improvident habits, will sell their plots to others, so that soon it will be all back again into the hands of a few; what will you do then?" The man looked puzzled, scratched his head, and cogitated deeply, until a simple solution presented itself: "Then, Squire," said he, "we shall divide again!"
Sir Richard Temple was undoubtedly an able man, but he was a complete stranger to the local conditions of the constituency. The villagers of Badsey especially, as well as of other adjoining parishes, were just beginning to retrieve their position, threatened by the collapse of corn-growing and consequent unemployment, by the adoption of market-gardening and fruit-growing. The land, run down and full of weeds and rubbish, had been cut up into allotments and offered to them as tenants, their only choice lying between years of hard work in redeeming its condition or emigration. Many young men chose the latter, and did well in the States of America; but where there was a wife and young children that course was scarcely possible, and the man became an allotment tenant. Passing one of these on a plot full of "squitch," which he was laboriously breaking up with a fork to expose it in big clods to a baking sun, I asked if he had taken it. "Well," said he, "I don't know whether I've takenitor it's takenme!"
These men, by unceasing labour and self-denial, were just beginning to turn the corner; they had cleaned the land, ameliorated its mechanical condition by application of soot and by deep digging with their beloved forks, and, having discovered how wonderfully asparagus nourished on this deep, rich soil, had planted large areas, as well as plum-trees and other market-garden crops, and the well-merited return was coming in increasingly year by year.
Sir Richard Temple did not understand the difference between the small holder, growing corn and ordinary crops in less favoured parts of the countrymen the one hand, and market-gardeners in the Vale of Evesham, with its early climate, splendid soil, and railway connection with huge artisan populations, delivering the produce with punctuality and despatch, on the other. He considered that small holders could not make an economic success where the farmers had failed, and had made his views well known in the constituency, but he did not distinguish between the small holder and the market-gardener.
The men of Badsey felt aggrieved, they knew better, and at a meeting he held in the village they gave him a rather noisy hearing, with interruptions such as, "Keep off them steel farks," "Mind them steel farks, Sir Richard," and so on.
Sir Richard came to ask for my support and assistance in our village, and, as I was not at home, my wife entertained him in my absence, with tea and wedding-cake. She innocently asked if he had come to canvass me; her straightforward query surprised him, but, after a moment's hesitation, he replied cautiously: "Well, something of that sort."
He was eventually returned, and the men of Badsey continued to flourish on asparagus-growing in spite of his warnings; new houses sprang up in every direction, and available labour grew scarcer and scarcer. Those splendid asparagus "sticks" or "buds," as they are called, tied with osier or withy twigs, which may be seen in Covent Garden Market and the large fruiterers' shops in Regent Street, are grown in and around the parishes of Badsey and Aldington. They command high prices, up to 15s. and 20s. a hundred for special stuff, and this year (1919) I see that £21 was realized for the champion hundred at the Badsey Asparagus Show. That, of course, must be regarded as quite exceptional, and possibly there were special considerations which made it worth the money to the purchaser.
Later came difficulties; after successive dry summers the asparagus was attacked by a fungoid complaint, called by the growers "rust." Instead of growing vigorously after the crop had been gathered—which is the time when the buds for next year's crop are developing on the crowns of the plants—and finally dying off naturally in beautiful feathery plumes of green and gold, it presented a dingy and rusty appearance, eventually turning black. Asparagus cannot stand long-continued summer and autumn drought; it likes plenty of moisture, in free circulation but not stagnant. The crops that followed the appearance I have described were very deficient, proving that the growing season of one year's foliage is the time when next year's crop is decided.
The growth of asparagus is still a very important part of the market-gardener's business in the parishes referred to, but it does not continue to produce the best results indefinitely and continuously on the same land, and the growers have been obliged to extend their acreages and take fresh plots. I have little doubt that with the scientific application of artificial fertilizers the yield would continue satisfactory for a much longer period. Plant disease of any kind is nearly always due to starvation for want of the chemical constituents upon which the crop feeds, though sometimes caused by unhealthy sap, the result of late spring frosts or unsuitable weather.
The asparagus-growers relied too much upon soot as a fertilizer; it has a marvellous effect upon the mechanical condition of heavy land; its particles intervene between the particles of the almost impalpable powder of which clay is composed, and the soil approximates to a well-tilled garden plot after a few applications and careful incorporation, and in the local phraseology, it becomes "all of a myrtle." But as plant food soot contains nitrogen only, a great plant stimulant, which quickly exhausts the soil of the other necessary constituents. If the growers would make use of basic slag, superphosphate, or bone dust to replace the phosphate of lime removed by the crop, and of potash in one of its available forms, they would soon experience a great improvement in the power of their asparagus to resist disease and deterioration.
I am aware that some of the smaller growers regard all kinds of artificial fertilizers with suspicion, but they may be interested, should they ever read these pages, in the following story. When Peruvian guano was first introduced into this country, the farmers could not be persuaded that it merited any reliance as a manure. The importers, in despair, caused some of the despised stuff to be sown in the form of huge letters spelling the word "FOOLS" upon a bare hillside, visible from a great distance. The following spring, with the beginning of growth, and throughout the summer, the word stared the farmers in the face whenever they chanced to look that way, in dark green outstanding characters upon the yellow background; after this practical demonstration there was no difficulty in finding purchasers.
Sir Richard Temple was opposed by Mr. Arthur Chamberlain, one at least of whose canvassers was not above stretching a point to obtain the votes of the labourers. My men told me that they had been promised roast beef and plum pudding every day of their lives should the Liberal party be returned. These tactics were again resorted to in the election of 1906, when walls were placarded with pictures of the Chinese employed in the gold-mines of the Transvaal, driven in chains by cruel overseers, presumably representing the Conservative Government which had sanctioned their employment. I know from what I heard in my new home, for I was no longer at Aldington, that this misrepresentation decided the votes of many of the more ignorant voters.
"Where many a generation's prayer,Hath perfumed and hath blessed the air."—GLADSTONE.
I saw a good deal of my three successive Vicars, for I was Vicar's churchwarden for a period of nearly twenty years, and was treasurer of the fund for the restoration and enlargement of Badsey Church. My first Vicar had held the living for over thirty years when we decided upon this important undertaking; and not wishing to be burdened with the correspondence which the work would entail, he invited me to act for him. I was pleased, because I have always been interested in the architecture of old buildings, especially churches, and readily undertook the post. I had the constant and intimate co-operation of my co-warden, Mr. Julius Sladden, of Badsey, and I may say that no two people ever worked together with greater harmony.
The restoration had been debated for many years; the ancient church was sadly dilapidated, and disfigured by an ugly gallery at the west end of the nave, which obscured the finest arch in the building, leading into the tower; and the incident which brought the matter within the range of possibility was romantic. The Vicar succeeded quite unexpectedly to a large inheritance; the news reached him and his wife, who was away from home at the time, simultaneously. The letters they wrote to each other on their good fortune crossed in the post, and characteristically each wrote "Badsey Church must now be restored." Soon afterwards the Vicar came to my house and, sitting down at my table, wrote me a cheque for £500 to start the fund.
On the advice of the patrons of the living—the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, Oxford—we invited Mr. Thomas Graham Jackson, now Sir Thomas Graham Jackson, R.A., to undertake the duties of architect. His work was well known at Oxford at the time, as the beautiful New Schools had just been completed from his designs; we were also most fortunate in obtaining the services of Mr. Thomas Collins, of Tewkesbury, as builder. Mr. Collins was devoted to church architecture, and the financial consideration of such work was to him quite secondary to the pleasure he experienced as a connoisseur in restoring to the dignity and beauty of the past any ecclesiastical building of distinguished interest. The first estimate was, I think, £1,500, exclusive of architect's fees, but when the work was completed we had expended in all a sum of over £2,130. We did not finally clear off the debt until 1894, nine years after the reopening of the church, and since then a considerable further sum has been expended in rehanging the old bells and adding two new ones to make up the full peal of eight.
It was delightful to experience the willingness of everybody to help; subscriptions, large and small, came in readily at the very outset, and this part of the work never became arduous until the last few hundreds had to be raised. Most of us experienced the truth of the proverbBis dat qui cito dat, but in a different sense from that which usually commends it, for many who gave quickly not only literally gave twice, but three times or more. Bazaars, concerts, and entertainments of all kinds were undertaken by the parishioners, a sum of £376 being raised by these means. Among them a bazaar at Badsey realized £130; another, later, at Aldington in one of my old barns, £80; and two concerts—afternoon and evening—at Malvern, organized by my wife and her sister, Miss Poulton, £100.
The Vicar received a notable letter from the late Lord Salisbury, the Premier; they had been at Eton and Christ Church together, and Lord Salisbury was godfather to the Vicar's eldest son. The Vicar had written of the fortune he had inherited, and spoke of some rooks as having brought the luck by building, for the first time, in an elm-tree in the vicarage grounds. Lord Salisbury, in sending a donation of £25 to the restoration fund, added: "I see a great many rooks building near my house" (Hatfield), "but the luck has not come to me yet." The Vicar's comment to me was: "If the luck has not yet come to Lord Salisbury, I don't see how anyone can hope for it!"
The Malvern concert was a strenuous undertaking; Badsey being a long way from Malvern, it was necessary to interest the inhabitants and to some extent to pleadin forma pauperis, for we were really a poor parish without any large resident landowners. The first thing was to get a good list of influential local patrons; and as soon as Lady Emily Foley consented, the promoters felt that the work was half done. Lady Emily Foley was supreme at Malvern, a very distinguished old lady and most popular, but perhaps a little alarming.
On the day of the two concerts I was detailed with a troop of young men, relatives of the patrons, to conduct the people to their seats, and an elaborate plan of the large Assembly Room was given me, with minute particulars of the lettered rows and numbered seats, presenting the appearance, somewhat, of a labyrinth. I was studying it at the doors, and arranging with the young stewards as to their individual functions, when I heard an alarmed exclamation from one of them: "Look out! here comes Lady Emily Foley!" In an instant the whole crowd took to their heels and disappeared down the corridor. With some little difficulty I succeeded in finding the seats of Lady Emily Foley's party, but I could see that she regarded me as a rather feeble cicerone.
She was, however, exceedingly gracious after my wife's first solo, which pleased her so much that we had to make an exception in this case, and allow an encore by her special request, though it had been arranged, owing to the length of the programme, that no encores were to be given. Lady Alwyne Compton, wife of the Dean of Worcester, very kindly assisted as a performer, my wife having frequently sung at charity concerts and entertainments for her in Worcester and the neighbourhood, among them a recital by Mr. Brandram ofA Midsummer-Night's Dream, when she undertook the soprano solos occurring in the play, at the Worcester Guildhall. Lady Alwyne Compton was very musical, and rehearsals were held in the stone-vaulted crypt beneath the Deanery, a place of splendid acoustic properties, which intensified the sound without coarsening it, and brought the voice back to the singer in a way unknown on the usual platform, decorated with screens, curtains, and flags, and obstructed by floral impedimenta.
Among the performers at the Malvern concerts some professionals had been engaged from London, including Miss Margaret Wild, a well-known pianist. I had given my men a holiday for the occasion and was anxious to hear their opinion of the performances. They considered the music rather too high class for them, but they thoroughly appreciated the nimble fingers of Miss Margaret Wild; one of them adding enthusiastically: "My word, her did make 'im (the piano) rottle!" Our old parish clerk too, at the time over eighty years of age, who walked three miles to Evesham Station in the morning, ascended the Worcestershire Beacon—nearly 1,500 feet—and finally walked back from Evesham to Badsey at night, was much struck by the recitations of Miss Isabel Bateman at the concert. The dear old man was somewhat deaf, and told me that, sitting towards the back of the room, "I couldn't hear nothing, but I could see as the gesters [gestures] was all right."
This old clerk was prominently devout in the church responses, and had some original pronunciations of unusual words; in the Nicene Creed he generally followed a few bars, so to speak, behind the Vicar, but one never failed to catch the words "apost'lick church" towards the end. He was very scornful of ghosts, and told me that he had been about the churchyard very often at night for fifty years without seeing anything like an apparition. But the whole village was alarmed, including the clerk, one Sunday when, about midnight, the tenor bell was heard solemnly tolling. The clerk, with some supporters and a lantern, unlocked the door, and found the village idiot—silly C.—in the tower ringing the bell. It appeared that, after service, the clerk had extinguished the lights and locked up for the night about eight o'clock. C., who had gone to sleep in the gallery with his head upon his arms before him on the desk, slumbered on until he woke in alarm some four hours later, to find himself alone and the church in total darkness, but he was intelligent enough to remember the bell and get his release.
C. had a hand-to-hand fight in the church tower with Aldington's special imbecile. After service the clerk invited me to the scene of the battle, pointing out some crimson traces on the stone pavement. I called upon our imbecile's parents on my way home, and the old father was greatly shocked. "Here he be, sir," he said; "I hope you'll give him a jolly good hiding." I told him I could hardly undertake the rôle of executioner on a Sunday, in cold blood, and contented myself with a severe reprimand.
I was handing the collecting-bag one morning after service, and finding it did not return from the end of the row of chairs as quickly as usual, I discovered this same individual with his handin the bag. I signed to him impatiently to pass it back. After service he came to the vestry and said that he had contributed a florin in mistake for a penny, and was trying to retrieve it. I could generally estimate pretty accurately the amount of the collection, as I handed the bag, knowing the extent of each person's usual gift, and sure enough, there was an extra florin among the coins, with which I sent him away happy.
The parish must have been an uncivilized place in former times; there was an accusing record beneath the west window of the tower, in the shape of a blocked up entrance. I was told that the ringers, not wishing to enter or leave the tower through the church door during service, and also to facilitate the smuggling in of unlimited cider had, after strenuous efforts, cut an opening through the ancient wall and base some feet in thickness, and that the achievement was announced to the village by uproarious cheering when at last they succeeded. A door was afterwards fitted to the aperture, but the entrance was abolished later by a more reverent Vicar.
The belfry was decorated with various bones of legs of mutton and of joints of beef, hung up to commemorate notable weddings of prominent parishioners—perhaps, too, as a hint to future aspirants to the state of matrimony—when the ringers had enjoyed a substantial meal and gallons of cider at the expense of the bridegroom. There seems to have been a traditional connection between church bell-ringing and thirst, for Gilbert White relates that when the bells of Selborne Church were recast and a new one presented in 1735, "The day of the arrival of this tuneable peal was observed as an high festival by the village, and rendered more joyous by an order from the donor that the treble bell should be fixed bottom upward in the ground and filled with punch, of which all present were permitted to partake."
The Vicar of Badsey told me that at the neighbouring church of Wickhamford, then also in his jurisdiction, that when he first came, in the early fifties, it was customary, as the men entered the church by the chancel door, to pitch their hats in a heap on the altar. Also that on his home-coming with his bride, he was, the same evening, requisitioned to put a stop to a fight between two drunken reprobates outside the vicarage gate. Badsey people can in these modern times point with pride to a much higher standard of civilization, and they fully recognize that "'Eave 'alf a brick at his 'ead; Bill," is a method of welcome to a stranger not considered precisely etiquette at the present day.
There was no vestry before the restoration of Badsey Church; the Vicar's surplice might be seen hanging over the side of one of the square pews which obstructed the chancel, and when the Vicar appeared he was followed by the clerk, who assisted at the public ceremony of robing. Church decorations at Christmas consisted at that time of sprigs of holly stuck upright in holes bored along the tops of the pew partitions at regular intervals, and at the harvest thanksgiving an historic miniature rick of corn annually made its appearance on the altar. In those days, however, flowers, which are scarcely suitable for a festival where the decorations should proclaim the abundance of the matured season of growth, by corn and fruit, were not included. I have seen too many of these, to the exclusion of corn, in modern town churches, and even wild oats, which, though very pretty, are not exactly typical of thanksgiving.
It is surprising how much damage may be done to valuable old woodwork by an enthusiastic band of decorators, assisted by an indiscriminating curate, and how inharmonious may be the general effect of individual labours—though charming taken separately—where a comprehensive scheme is neglected. I have counted fourteen differing reds—not tones or shades of the same colour—including the hood of the officiating clergyman, in one chancel at the same time, bewildering to the eye and distracting to the mind. And I once saw a beautiful and priceless old Elizabethan table in a vestry, covered with a mouldy piece of purple velvet secured with tin-tacks driven into the tortured oak. There are, or were, two lovely old Chippendale chairs with the characteristic backs and legs inside the altar-rails of Badsey Church; they are valuable and no doubt duly appreciated, not only for their own sake, but because they were the gift of dear old Barnard, the clerk, who spent fifty years of his life in the service of the church.
I once heard a curate preaching to an agricultural congregation at a harvest thanksgiving after a disastrous season, when the earth had not yielded much by way of increase, remarking that in such a time of scarcity we might be thankful that plenty of foreign corn would be available; good theology, perhaps, but scarcely expedient under the circumstances.
We found Sir Thomas Graham Jackson a purist in the matter of church restoration, and in my capacity as churchwarden and treasurer, I was fortunate in having to confer with a man of such pre-eminent good taste. He would not allow some new oak panels, with which we had to supplement the old linen-pattern panels of the pulpit, to be coloured to match the old work. "Time," he said, "will bring them all together." Possibly the lapse of two hundred years may do so, but I saw at once that he was right in the principle that no sham should be tolerated in honest work, more especially in a sacred building. We objected also to a new chimney which surmounted the junction of the nave and choir exteriorly: it seemed to smack of domestic detail; but here again he satisfied us by saying that, as heating the building was a modern necessity, there was no reason to be ashamed of such an indispensable addition. As a matter of fact, this chimney long ago became nicely toned down by its native soot, and is practically unnoticeable.
There is much American oak, I believe, now used in new churches and public buildings; it appears to resemble chestnut much more than English oak, and I doubt whether it will ever acquire the beautiful tone which time confers upon the latter. It should, however, be recognized that much of the depth of colour of old oak panelling is really nothing but dirt, though the true dark brown tint of old age can be found underneath, and right to the centre of each piece. Spring-cleaning of the past consisted very much in polishing with beeswax and turpentine, without removing the dirt produced by smoky fires and constant handling, so that extraneous matter became coated with the polish and preserved beneath it. I have had occasion, when restoring old woodwork, to wash off this outside accretion, and when removed, the tone of the wood remained still dark, though lighter than before it lost its black and somewhat sticky appearance.
The fakers of sham old furniture produce the intense darkness by stains of various kinds. I once found myself at an inn in Devonshire which contained a quantity of "delft" and "antique oak" furniture for sale. While the attendant was bringing me some refreshment, I tested the genuineness of the oak by a small chip with my pocket-knife, and, as I anticipated, found perfectly white wood under the surface, and, I believe, American oak. The irony of the transaction is striking; here was a piece of wood imported from the States only a few months before, converted in this country into Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Stuart furniture, and then, it may be, bought by American visitors and taken back to their own country.
Some years before the church restoration could be taken in hand, a piece of land, bordering the west side of the churchyard, and between it and the highroad, and another similar piece on the east side of the churchyard, were offered for sale by auction. They belonged to the old Badsey Manor property and of course occupied important positions lying in each case just between the churchyard and the adjoining roads. An individual who had fallen out with the Vicar announced his intention of purchasing these pieces and building cottages and a public-house upon them, presumably "to spite the parson."
The Vicar at once saw the absolute necessity of acquiring the land for the church and enclosing it with suitable walls, as an addition to the churchyard. It would have been a terrible eyesore from the village street if ugly brick and blue-slated buildings were erected in front of the beautiful old grey church, and the idea of an inn in such a place was intolerable. He consulted the patrons of the living, who agreed to help, and simultaneously a good old aunt gave him leave to bid up to a certain sum on her behalf as a gift to the parish.
The patrons sent a representative to the sale with an undisclosed price, at which he was empowered to make the purchase. Absolute secrecy was preserved, and, except the Vicar, no one knew the man or whom he represented; he was to leave the train from Oxford at Honeybourne Station so as not even to come through Evesham to Badsey. The Vicar had arranged that the patrons' representative should also bid on behalf of the aunt, but did not disclose the limit. The man was not to bid until the Vicar himself stopped, and he was to go on bidding until the Vicar removed a rose from his button-hole, which would signify that the aunt's limit was reached. Whether the patrons' representative could go any further or not, the Vicar did not know.
Before the auction the two did not meet, and they sat apart during the proceedings. The village malcontent was in great form, making certain of success, and was delighted when the Vicar apparently gave up bidding as if beaten. The rose was still in his button-hole, but before long the aunt's limit was reached, and it had to be removed; he was however relieved to find that the patrons' representative continued to bid. His opponent was getting very fidgety as the price rose, hesitating for some moments every time the bidding was against him. Just as the hammer was about to fall he would arrest it with, "Try 'im again," but the stranger instantly capped his reluctant bid, always leaving him to consider a further advance in great discomfort. At last in despair but quite certain that the Vicar at any rate was knocked out he gave up, exclaiming, "'E med 'ave it, 'e med 'ave it"; and the hammer fell. All eyes were fixed upon the unknown bidder, and the auctioneer demanded "the name of the buyer"; very quietly came the announcement, "The Dean and Chapter of Christ Church." Horribly disgusted the malcontent fired a parting shot as he reached the door: "If I'd a-knowed the pairson was a goin' to 'ave it, I'd a made 'im pay a pretty penny more nor that."
This Vicar was a very impressive reader, especially of dramatic stories from the Old Testament. As he read the account of the discomfiture of the priests of Baal by the Prophet Elijah one could visualize the scene. Elijah's dripping sacrifice blazing to the skies, the priests of Baal, mutilated by their own knives and lancets, in vain imploring their god to send the fire to vindicate himself. The heavens were black, and one could hear the rush of Ahab's chariot, the roar of the thunder and the hissing torrent of rain, and see the prophet running swiftly before him. The Vicar, however, was not an actor like a clergyman I was told of, who got so excited over Agag and his delicate approach to Samuel that he could not resist an illustration to intensify the action by taking a mincing step or two aside from the lectern.
No village is complete without its curmudgeon or self-appointed grumbler, just as every village has its special imbecile. The curmudgeon originates in a class above the idiot; very often he is an ex-churchwarden, guardian, way-warden, or other official, who has resigned in dudgeon or been ousted from his post for some neglect or failure. He is a man with whom the world has gone wrong, a sufferer, perhaps, from some disaster which has become an obsession. He views everything with distorted eyesight; nothing pleases him, and he wants to put everybody right. He cherishes a perpetual grievance against some individual or clique for a fancied slight, and goes about trying to stir up ill-feeling among the ignorant by malicious insinuations. In former times he was an adept at "parson-baiting" at the annual Easter vestry meeting, when he would air his grievance against the Vicar of the parish or any person in authority.
At these vestries the Vicar is wise if he declares the curmudgeon to be "out of order," and declines to hear him, for, legally, the business does not include any matter which does not appear upon the notice convening the meeting, signed by the Vicar and churchwardens. This usually announces that churchwardens will be elected and the accounts produced; the latter, since church rates were abolished, is not obligatory, and only subscribers have a right to question them. The proceedings are not legal unless threefulldays have elapsed since the publication of the notice on a Sunday before morning service, the following Thursday being thus the earliest day on which the meeting can take place. It is important to remember that no churchwarden has a legal status before he has been formally admitted by the Archdeacon.
In former times, before the creation of Parish, District and County Councils, the curmudgeon, after the reaction of the winter months, became very prominent towards the time of the Easter vestry, when he would appear, having enlisted a small band of supporters, with a number of grievances relating to rates, parish officials, rights of way, footpaths, and such-like debatable subjects. Of course, he should have been promptly squashed by the chairman, but too often an indulgent Vicar would allow him to have his fling.
Now, however, the curmudgeon can easily get himself elected upon one of the numerous councils; having mismanaged his own affairs until he has none left to manage, he appears to regard himself as a fit and proper person to mismanage the business of other people, and the brief authority which his position confers gives him a welcome opportunity of letting off superfluous steam.
Parishioners sometimes combined and elected an unpopular person to a troublesome post which nobody wanted. Such was the office of way-warden, under whose jurisdiction came the management and repair of parish roads, superintending and paying the roadmen, and keeping the necessary records and accounts. A market-gardener, a canny Scot, who had fallen into disfavour, had this office thrust upon him much against his will. Once elected, the victim had no choice in the matter, and, being a very busy man, he was thoroughly annoyed. He soon discovered a weapon wherewith to avenge the wrong—one which his opponents had put into his hands themselves; during his year of office he restricted the road repairs to a lane adjoining his own land, leading to the railway-station, which his carts traversed many times daily. He gave it a thorough good coat of stones, and all the available labour, as well as the cash chargeable on the rates of the parish, was in this way expended, chiefly for his own benefit, though the parish shared to the extent of the use they made of this particular piece of road. Great was the outcry, but nothing could be done till the year of office expired, and, naturally, he was never elected again.
The purchase of the land adjoining the churchyard had a remarkable sequel; it was conveyed to the Vicar and churchwardens for the time being, these original churchwardens having been long out of the office before my appointment. After the restoration of the church my co-warden and I, with the Vicar's consent, levelled the rough places in the neglected churchyard, sowed it with grass seeds, and planted various ornamental shrubs; we had the untidy southern boundary carefully dug over, and set a man to plant a yew-hedge. He was thus employed when a parishioner appeared in some excitement, and objected to the planting of yew on account of possible damage to sheep grazing in the churchyard, claiming the right—which, as a matter of fact, belonged to the Vicar alone, though never exercised—to such grazing, jointly with the Vicar. He proceeded to pull up some of the young yews as a protest, and threw them uprooted on the ground. The man employed reported the matter to my co-warden, living near, who was very soon at my house.
We decided to prosecute the offender, and obtained the Vicar's consent, he being the legal prosecutor. The case was heard by a bench of magistrates composed entirely of clergy and churchwarden squires, who naturally sympathized with us, and, quite logically, convicted the defendant in a fine, I think, of about 25s. and costs, or a term in Worcester Gaol in default. The defendant refused to pay a farthing and was removed in custody; but later our dear old Vicar, very generously, came forward and paid the amount himself.
Shortly before the church restoration I had a notice to attend an archidiaconal visitation, and duly appeared at the church at the time arranged. The Archdeacon made a careful inspection of the fabric and property of the church, not too well pleased with its dilapidated appearance. Nothing much was said till we reached the fourteenth-century font, showing signs of long use. The Archdeacon motioned to the clerk to remove the oak cover, and the old man, with the air of an officious waiter, lifted it with a flourish, disclosing, inside the cracked font, a white pudding-basin, inside which, again, reposed a species of beetle known as a "devil's coach-horse." The Archdeacon, peering in and evidently recognizing the insect and its popular designation, and looking much shocked, exclaimed with some warmth: "Dear me! I should scarcely have expected to findthatthing in a font!"
This story reminds me of a similar visitation depicted inPunch. The Archdeacon was seen at the lych-gate of a country church in company with a churchwarden farmer, the Vicar being unable to attend. The contrast was well delineated—the Archdeacon tall, thin, and ascetic, in a long black coat and archidiaconal hat; and the farmer of the John Bull type, in ample breeches and gaiters. The churchyard presented a magnificent crop of exuberant wheat:
Archdeacon. I don't like this at all; I shall really have to speak to the Vicar about it.
Churchwarden (thinking of the rotation of crops). Just what I told un, sir—just what I told 'un. "You keeps on a-wheating of it and a-wheating of it," I says; "why don't you tater it?" says I.
At Badsey objections were soon heard to the innovation of the surpliced choir and improved music in the restored church; one old villager, living close by, expressed himself as follows concerning the entry of the Vicar and choir, in procession, from the new vestry:
"They come in with them boys all dressed up like a lot of little parsons, and the parson behind 'em just like the old Pope hisself. But there ain't no call for me to go to church now, for I can set at home and hear 'em a baarlin' [noise like a calf] and a harmenin [amening] in me own house."
On a similar occasion, in another parish where more elaborate music had been introduced, an old coachman, given to much devotional musical energy, told me as a sore grievance: "You know, sir, I'd used to like singin' a bit myself, but now, as soon as I've worked myself up to a tidy old pitch, all of a suddentheyleaves off, and I be left a bawlin'!"
Among various special weekday services I remember a Confirmation when an elderly Aldington parishioner had courageously decided to participate in the rite. She was missing from the ceremony, and told my wife afterwards, in answer to inquiries, that a bad headache had prevented her from attending, adding: "But there, you can't stand agin your 'ead!"
I was at the house of a neighbouring Vicar where the Bishop of the diocese had been lunching shortly before, when there was a dish of very fine oranges on the table and another of Blenheim orange apples. The Bishop was offered a Blenheim orange by the Vicar, who remarked that they came from his own garden. The Bishop had probably never heard of a Blenheim orange, and the latter word directed his attention to the dish of oranges. He examined them with great surprise, and exclaimed: "Dear me! I had no idea that oranges would come to such perfection out of doors in this climate."
A capital story was told by a Bishop of Worcester, in connection with the efforts of the Church in that part of the country to alleviate the lot of the hop-pickers, who flock into Worcestershire in September by the thousand. One of the mission workers, who had gone down to the hopyards, met a dilapidated individual in a country lane, who said he was "a picker." Pressed for further particulars, the man responded:
"In the summer I picks peas and fruit; when autumn comes I picks hops; in the winter I picks pockets; and when I'm caught I picks oakum. I'm kept nice and warm during the cold months, and when the fine days come round once more I starts pea-picking again."
My second Vicar was a scholar, an excellent preacher of very condensed sermons; he conducted the services with great dignity, but his manner to the villagers was a little alarming. He found the old clerk somewhat officious, I think. One evening, after service, when some strangers from Evesham attended—for Badsey was a pleasant walk on a summer evening—the clerk announced to the Vicar, with great jubilation, that "the gentleman with the party from Evesham expressed himself as very well satisfied with the service." No doubt the clerk had received a practical proof of the satisfaction. The clerk imagined, I believe, that he was as much responsible for the conduct of the services as the Vicar, and thought the latter would be equally pleased with the stranger's commendation. He was disappointed, I fear, for the Vicar did not seem in the least impressed, showing, too, some annoyance at what doubtless appeared to him great presumption.
At the time of the Boer War, followed by the Boxers' revolt in China and the Siege of Peking, when telegrams were exhibited in the post-office every Sunday morning, I saw one day, on my way to church, that Peking had been relieved. The Vicar—my third—preached on the subject of the terrors of the siege—his sermon having been written on the previous day—and drew a harrowing picture of the fate of the defenders. After service I asked if he had not seen the telegram, and told him the good news. "Good gracious!" said he; "Iamglad I didn't know that before the service; whatshouldI have done about my sermon?" I was a little surprised that the delivery of a sermon which was no longer to the point should appear more important than the announcement of the happy event; but perhaps the position would have been somewhat undignified had he been obliged to explain, and dismiss the congregation with apologies.
An elderly Vicar, in a parish in the adjoining county, Gloucestershire, found the morning service with a sermon very fatiguing, and the patron, the Squire, suggested that the ante-Communion service would be less tiring in place of the latter. He was not a very interesting preacher, and the Squire was quite as well pleased as the Vicar when he agreed. There was never a sermon at the morning service thereafter.
Other denominations besides the Church, of course, existed in the parish and neighbourhood; we did not hear much about them, but the following story was related as occurring in a neighbouring village. To see the point it is necessary to introduce the actors; they consisted of Daniel S. and Jim H., rival hedgers in the art of "pleaching," of which Joseph Arch was such a notable exponent. Daniel had lately been employed upon a job of this kind for a farmer, Mr. (locally Master) R. The scene was the room that did duty for a chapel in the village.
Daniel S. advanced to the reading-desk, and, turning over the leaves of the Bible to find the Book of Daniel, announced sententiously: "Let's see what Dannel done in his dai (day)." Up jumped Jim H. at the back of the room: "Oh, I can tell tha (thee) what Dannel done in his dai—cut a yedge (hedge) for Master R., and took whome all the best of the 'ood (wood)!"
A story was current too—nearer home this time—of a grand fete given to the children. They marched in procession from one village to another, in which the tea was to take place, under the leadership of an ancient parishioner. Of this person it was said that he had violated every article of the Decalogue, and that had the number been twenty instead of ten he would have treated them with equal indifference! As the children entered the second village with beaming faces and banners waving, as he gave the word of command, they sang in sweet trebles and in perfect innocence, "See the mighty host advancing, Satan leading on!"