"Allow me first to show you the analysis I keep,And the compounds to explain of this experimental heap,Where hydrogen and nitrogen and oxygen abound,To hasten germination and to fertilize the ground."
"A putty sight o' learning you have piled up of a ruck;The only name it went by in my feyther's time was muck.I knows not how the tool you call a nallysis may work,I turns it when it's rotten pretty handy wi' a fork."
"A famous pen of Cotswolds, pass your hand along the back,Fleeces fit for stuffing the Lord Chancellor's woolsack!For premiums e'en 'Inquisitor' would own these wethersarefit,If you want to purchase good uns you must go to Mr. Garsit.[1]
"Two bulls first rate, of different breeds, the judges allprotestBoth are so super-excellent, they know not which is best.Fair[1] could he see this Ayrshire, would with jealousy be riled;That hairy one's a Welshman, and was bred by Mr. Wild."[1]
"Well, well, that little hairy bull, he shanna be so bad:But what be yonder beast I hear, a-bellowing like mad,A-snorting fire and smoke out? be it some big Roosian gun!Or be it twenty bullocks squez together into one?"
"My steam factotum, that, Sir, doing all I have to do,My ploughman and my reaper, and my jolly thrasher, too!Steam's yet but in its infancy, no mortal man aliveCan tell to what perfection modern farming will arrive."
"Steam as yet is but an infant"—he had scarcely said the word,When through the tottering farmstead was a loud explosion heard;The engine dealing death around, destruction and dismay;Though steam be but an infant this indeed was no child's play.
The women screamed like blazes, as the blazing hayrick burned,The sucking pigs were in a crack, all into crackling turned;Grilled chickens clog the hencoop, roasted ducklings choke thegutter,And turkeys round the poultry yard on devilled pinions flutter.
Two feet deep in buttermilk the stoker's two feet lie,The cook before she bakes it finds a finger in the pie;The labourers for their lost legs are looking round the farm,They couldn't lend a hand because they had not got an arm.
Oldstyle all soot, from head to foot, looked like a big blacksheep,Newstyle was thrown upon his own experimental heap;"That weather-glass," said Oldstyle, "canna be in proper fettle,Or it might as well a tow'd us there was thunder in the kettle."
"Steam is so expansive." "Aye," said Oldstyle, "so I see.So expensive, as you call it, that it winna do for me;According to my notion, that's a beast that canna pay,Who champs up for his morning feed a hundred ton of hay."
Then to himself, said Oldstyle, as he homewards quickly went,"I'll tak' no farm where doctors' bills be heavier than the rent;I've never in hot water been, steam shanna speed my plough,I'd liefer thrash my corn out by the sweat of my own brow.
"I neither want to scald my pigs, nor toast my cheese, not I,Afore the butcher sticks 'em or the factor comes to buy;They shanna catch me here again to risk my limbs and loife;I've nought at whoam to blow me up except it be my woif."
"Oft expectation fails, and most oft thereWhere most it promises; and oft it hitsWhere hope is coldest and despair most fits."
—All's Well that Ends Well.
In a very rare black-letter book on hop culture,A Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe Garden, published in the year 1578 and therefore over 340 years old, the author, Reynolde Scot, has the following quaint remarks on one of the disorders to which the hop plant is liable:
"The hoppe that liketh not his entertainment, namely his seat, his ground, his keeper, or the manner of his setting, comith up thick and rough in leaves, very like unto a nettle; and will be much bitten with a little black flye, who, also, will not do harme unto good hoppes, who if she leave the leaf as full of holes as a nettle, yet she seldome proceedeth to the utter destruction of the Hoppe; where the garden standeth bleake, the heat of summer will reform this matter."
Thomas Tusser, who lived 1515 to 1580, in hisFive Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, included many seasonable verses on Hop-growing, among which the following are worth quoting:
Get into thy hop-yard for now it is timeTo teach Robin Hop on his pole how to climb,To follow the sun, as his property is,And weed him and trim him if aught go amiss.
Whom fancy perswadeth among other crops,To have for his spending sufficient of hops:Must willingly follow of choices to chuseSuch lessons approved, as skilfull do use.
Ground gravelly, sandy, and mixed with clay,Is naughty for hops, any manner of way;Or if it be mingled with rubbish and stone,For dryness and barrenness let it alone.
Chuse soil for the hop of the rottenest mould,Well dunged and wrought as a garden plot should:Not far from the water (but not overflown),This lesson well noted is meet to be known.
The sun in the south, or else southly and west,Is joy to the hop, as welcomed ghest:But wind in the north, or else northerly east,To hop is as ill, as a fray in a feast.
Meet plot for a hop-yard, once found as is told,Make thereof account, as of jewell of gold:Now dig it and leave it the sun for to burn,And afterward fence it to serve for that turn.
The hop for his profit, I thus do exalt,It strengtheneth drink and it favoureth malt,And being well brewed, long kept it will last,And drawing abide, if ye draw not too fast.
In Worcestershire and Herefordshire hop-gardens are always called hop-yards, which seems to be only a local and more ancient form of the same word, and from the same root. The termination occurs also in "orchard"—from the Anglo-Saxonortgeard(a wort-yard) —"olive-yard," and "vineyard."
The quotation from thePerfitie Platforme of a Hoppe Gardenrefers to "a little black flye," now called "the flea" (Worcestershire plural "flen"), really a beetle like the "turnip fly," and it is the first pest that attacks the hop every year.
"First the flea, then the fly,Then the lice, and then they die,"
is a couplet repeated in all the hop districts to-day, but the damage done by the flea is not to be compared to that caused by the next pest, the fly. The latter is one of the numerous species of aphis which begins its attack in the winged state, and after producing wingless green lice in abundance—which further increase by the process known as "gemmation"—reappears with wings in the final generation of the lice, and hibernates in readiness for its visitation in the spring next year.
So long as the hop plant maintains its health the aphis is comparatively harmless, for the plant is then able to elaborate to the full the bitter principle which is its natural protection. On a really hot day in July it is sometimes possible to detect the distinctive scent of the hop quite plainly in walking through the plantation, long before any hops appear, and when this is noticeable very little of the aphis blight can be found. There is however nearly always a small sprinkling lying in wait, and a few days of unsuitable weather will reduce the vitality of the plant so that the blight immediately begins to increase.
There is little doubt that all the distinctive principles of plants or trees have been evolved, and are in perfect health elaborated, as a protection from their most destructive insect or fungoid enemies; just as physical protective equipment, such as thorns, prickles, and stinging apparatus, is produced by other plants or trees as safeguards against more powerful foes. If it were not so, plants that are even now seriously damaged and kept in check by such pests would long ago have become extinct.
Pursuing this theory it seems likely that the solanin of the potato is its natural protection against the disease caused by the fungusPhytophthora infestans. The idea is suggested by the invariably increasing liability to the potato disease experienced as new sorts become old. The new kinds of potatoes are produced from the seed—not the tubers—of the old varieties, and the seed, when fully vitalized and capable of germination, may be assumed to contain the maximum potentiality for transmission of the active principle to the tubers immediately descended from it. During the early years of their existence these revitalized tubers contain so much solanin that they are not only injurious, but more or less poisonous, to man, and it is only after they have been cultivated, and have produced further generations of tubersfromtubers, that they become eatable, showing that in the tuber condition the plant gradually loses its efficient protection.
In the case of the hop the most effective remedy is a solution of quassia and soft soap. The caustic potash in the soap neutralizes the oily integument of the lice and dries them up, but the quassia supplies a bitter principle not unlike that of the hop, though without its grateful aroma, which acts as a protection in the absence of the bitter of the hop itself. So closely does the hop bitter resemble that of quassia, that in seasons of hop failure it is said to be employed as a substitute in brewing, and at one time its use for that purpose was prohibited by law.
As a further proof that the bitter principle of the hop is distasteful to the aphis, it is noticeable that when the fly first arrives it always attacks the topmost shoots of the bine where the leaves have not developed, and where the active principle is likely to be weakest. The same position is selected by the aphis of the rose, the bean, and every plant or tree subject to aphis attack—it is the undeveloped and therefore unprotected part which is chosen.
It is remarkable that when a destructive blight is proceeding—generally in a wet and cold time—and a sudden change occurs to really hot dry weather, the hop plant often recovers its tone automatically, shakes off the disease, and the blight dies away, a fact which strengthens the assumption that in normal weather the plant can protect itself. Again, the blight is always most persistent under the shade of trees or tall hedges, or where the bine is over luxuriant, when owing to the exclusion of light and air the plant is unable to elaborate its natural safeguard.
Fertilizers not well balanced as to their constituents, and containing an excess of nitrogen, act as stimulants without supplying the minerals necessary for perfect health. The effect is the same as that produced in man by an excess of alcohol and a deficiency of nourishing food, the health of the subject suffers in both cases, leaving a predisposition to disease.
Reasoning by analogy, these causes affecting the success or failure of plants give us the clue to the remedies for bacterial disease in man. Disease is the consequence and penalty of life under unnatural or unfavourable conditions, which should first receive attention and improvement. When in spite of improved conditions disease persists, specifics must be sought. The conditions which produce disease in the vegetable world are fought by the active principle of each plant, and inasmuch as the germ diseases of man are probably, though distantly, related to those which affect vegetable life, the specific protections of plants should be exploited for the treatment of human complaints. This, of course, has for long been a practice, but possibly more success might be achieved by careful research to identify each distinct bacterial disease in man with its co-related distinct disease in plants, so as to utilize as a remedy for the former the natural protection which the latter indicates.
Our artificially evolved domesticated plants are more subject to disease than their wild prototypes, because they are not natural survivals of the fittest. They are survivals only by virtue of the art of man, inducing special properties pleasing to man's senses, and therefore profitable for sale; but in the development of some such special excellence, ability to elaborate protective defence is generally neglected, and the special excellence produced may possibly be antagonistic to the really sound constitution of the plant. It is thus that cultivated plants are more in need of watchful care and attention than their wild relations, and that, in the development of quality, a sacrifice of quantity may be involved.
The observant hop grower notices constant changes in the appearance of his plants from day to day under varying weather influences and other conditions: a retarded and unhappy expression in a cold, wet and rough time; an eager and hopeful expansiveness under genial conditions; a dark, plethoric and rampant growth where too much nitrogen is available, and a brilliant and healthily-restrained normality when properly balanced nourishment is provided.
There should be sympathy between the grower and his plants, such as is described by Blackmore in hisChristowell; though in the following passage with consummate art he puts the words into the mouth of the sympathetic daughter of the amateur vine-grower, and gives the plant the credit of the first advance:
"'For people to talk about "sensitive plants,"' she says, 'does seem such sad nonsense, when every plant that lives is sensitive. Just look at this holly-leafed baby vine, with every point cut like a prickle, yet much too tender and good to prick me. It follows every motion of my hand; it crisps its little veinings up whenever I come near it; and it feels in every fibre that I am looking at it.'"
Blackmore was much more than a writer of fiction; I think he had a deeper insight into the spirit of Nature and country character than perhaps any writer of modern times; he combined the accuracy of the scholar with the practical knowledge of the farmer and gardener; the logic of the philosopher with the fancy and expression of the poet. I regard the appreciation of hisLorna Doone—a book in which one can smell the violets—as the test of a real country lover; I mean a country lover who, besides the gift of acute observation, has the deeper gift of imaginative perception. If only the book could have been illustrated by the pencil of Randolph Caldecott, such a union of sympathy between author and artist would have produced a work unparalleled in rural literature.
Like all insects the aphis has its special insect enemies, among which the lady-bird ("lady-cow" in Worcestershire) is the most important. It lays its eggs in clusters on the hop-leaf, and in a few days the larvæ (called "niggers") are hatched, aggressive-looking creatures with insatiable appetites. It is amusing to watch them hunting over the lower side of the leaf like a sporting dog in a turnip field, and devouring the lice in quantities. I knew an old hop grower in Hampshire who had a standing offer of a guinea a quart for lady-birds, but it is scarcely necessary to add that the reward was never claimed.
The hop is dioecious (producing male and female blossoms on separate plants), but very rarely both can be found on the same stem—the plant thus becoming monoecious. In 1893, a very hot dry year, several specimens were found, including one in Kent, one in Surrey, one in Herefordshire, and one in my own hopyards at Aldington. It is curious that the same unusual season should have produced the same abnormality in places so far apart, practically representing all the hop districts of the country.
"Till James's Day be past and gone,You might grow hops or you might grow none."
St. James's Day is July 25, and so uncertain was the crop in the days before insecticides were in use, that the saying fairly represents the specially speculative nature of the crop in former times. As an instance of the effects of varying years I had the uncommon experience of picking two crops in twelve months: the first in a very late season when the picking did not commence till after Worcester hop-fair day, September 19th, and the second the following year when picking was unusually early, and was completed before the fair day. At Farnham, where many of the tradespeople indulged in a little annual flutter as small hop growers, in addition to a more regular source of income from their respective trades, it was said that the first question on meeting each other was not, "How are you?" but "How arethey?"
Hop-picking is always somewhat reminiscent of the Saturnalia; with hundreds of strangers from distant villages and a few gipsies and tramps, it is not possible to enforce strict discipline, for it is very necessary to keep the people in good-humour. On the final day of the picking they expect to be allowed to indulge in a good deal of horse-play, the great joke being suddenly to upset an unpopular individual into a crib among the hops. Shrieks of laughter greet the disappearance of the unlucky one, of whom nothing is to be seen except a struggling leg protruding from the crib.
The last operation in the hop garden is stacking the poles, and burning the bine, a most inflammable material which makes a prodigious blaze. As the men watch the leaping flames the same remark is made year after year—"fire is a good servant, but a bad master." These fires seem a great waste of good fibrous matter, as in former times the bine was utilized for making coarse sacking and brown paper. During the war I suggested to the National Salvage Council that, owing to the scarcity of both these articles, it might be worth while to attempt the resuscitation of the manufacture. The suggestion was followed by experiments which produced quite a useful brown paper of which I received a sample, but the cost of treatment was unfortunately prohibitive from the commercial point of view.
Worcester hop fair is the start of the trade, and the market is held behind the Hop-Pole Hotel, where there are spacious stores and offices for the merchants. When the crop is bountiful the stores are filled to overflowing, and the ancient Guildhall built in 1721 has to be requisitioned. On either side of the doorway stand the statues of Carolus I. and Carolus II., who must have watched the entrance and the exit of innumerable pockets. Worcester is distinguished as the Faithful City, for like the County it had small use for Cromwell and his Roundheads; and to this day, on the date of the restoration of Charles II.—"the twenty-ninth of May, oak apple day"—a spray of oak or an oak-apple is in some villages worn as a badge of loyalty, the penalty for non-observance being a stroke on the hands with a stinging-nettle.
It was a great relief to get away from my 300 pickers and ride the eighteen miles to Worcester on my bicycle, through the lovely river scenery of the Vale of Evesham, the hedges drooping beneath the weight of brilliant berries, the orchards loaded with apples, the clean bright stubbles, and the cattle in the lush aftermath; then, after a visit to the busy hop-market and a stroll among the curio shops in New Street, to return by a different road as the shadows were lengthening beside the copses and the hedgerow timber trees.
In former times the October fair at Weyhill, near Andover, was the market for the Hampshire and Farnham hops; it was the custom for the growers to send them by road, and load back with cheese brought to the fair by the Wiltshire farmers. I heard of a Hampshire grower, who in a year of great scarcity had spent some time trying to sell several pockets to an anxious but reluctant buyer, unwilling to give the price asked—£20 a hundredweight. They continued the deal in the evening at the inn at Andover, where both were staying, and said "Good-night" without having concluded the bargain. The grower was in bed and almost asleep when he heard a knock at his door, and a voice, "Give you £18," which he refused. Next morning trade was dull and the buyer would not repeat his offer, and at the end of the week the grower sent his hops home again. Prices continued to fall, until two years later he sold the same lot at 5s. a hundredweight to a cunning speculator, who took them out to sea, after claiming a return of the duty (about £1 a hundredweight originally paid by the grower), which the Excise refunded onexportedhops. The hops went overboard of course, and the buyer netted the difference between the price he paid and the amount received for the refunded duty.
At these old fairs the showmen and gipsies take large sums in the "pleasure" departments for admission to their exhibitions—swings, roundabouts, shooting-galleries, and coco-nut shies. In Evesham Post-Office a gipsy woman once asked me to write a letter; she handed me an order for £10, and instructed me to send it to a London firm for £5 worth of best coco-nuts and £5 worth of seconds. They were for use on the shies; it struck me as a large supply, and the economical division of the qualities as ingenious.
"But if I praised the busy town,He loved to rail against it still,For 'ground in yonder social millWe rub each other's angles down,
"'And merge,' he said, 'in form and glossThe picturesque of man and man.'"—In Memoriam.
During the terribly wet summer of 1879 the following lines were written—it was said by the then Bishop of Wakefield—in the visitors' book at the White Lion Hotel at Bala, in Wales:
"The weather depends on the moon, as a rule,And I've found that the saying is true;For at Bala it rains when the moon's at the full,And it rains when the moon's at the new.
"When the moon's at the quarter, then down comes the rain;At the half it's no better I ween;When the moon's at three-quarters it's at it again,And it rains besides mostly between."
Rather hard on Bala, for the summer was so abnormally wet that these lines would have been true of any part of England. I suppose everybody is more or less interested in the weather, but the custom of alluding to the obvious, as an opening to conversation, is probably a survival from the time when everyone was directly interested in its effect upon agriculture.
Nothing proves how completely town interests now dominate those of the country so much as the innovation called "summer time." During the war it was no doubt a boon to allotment holders, and of course it gives a longer evening to those employed all day indoors; but it inflicts direct loss on the farmer, who is practically forced to adopt it in order to supply the towns with produce in time for their altered habits. The farmer exchanges the last hour of the normal day, one of the most valuable in the old working time, for the first hour of the new day, one of the most useless, for owing to the dew which the sun has not had time to dry up, many agricultural operations cannot be properly performed or even commenced—hay-making and corn-hoeing for instance are impossible. We may be sure that the former times of beginning and ending farm-work, which I suppose had been customary for at least 2,000 years in England, did not receive the sanction of such a period without good reason, and it seems to me, that so far as outdoor work is concerned the new arrangement savours of "teaching our grandmothers to suck eggs."
There is a saving of lighting requirements, no doubt, but in such a six weeks of winterly mornings as we had, following the commencement of "summer time" this first year of peace, there is a considerable increase in the consumption of fuel. Wherever possible, I suppose, most houses are built to face the south, and the breakfast-room would be generally on that side, so that by 9 o'clock, old time, the sun had warmed the room, but at 9 o'clock, new time, the sun has scarcely looked in at the window; a fire is probably lighted and to save trouble kept up all day. If the new arrangement is continued, and I understand that it was tried more than 100 years ago and abandoned as a mistake, it would be much better to begin it at least a month later. Our present May Day is nearly a fortnight earlier than before the New Style was introduced, which is the reason why old traditions of May Day merry-makings appear unseasonable; and probably the promoters of summer time have not heard of "blackthorn winter" and "whitethorn winter," which, in the country, we experience regularly every year in April and May.
"When the grass grows in JaniveerIt grows the worse for it all the year,"
and
"If Candlemas-Day be fine and fairThe half of winter's to come and mair;If Candlemas-Day be wet and foulThe half of winter was gone at Yule,"
are both rhymes suggesting the probability of wintry weather to follow, if the early weeks of the year are mild and unseasonable, and they may be considered as generally correct prognostications. A neighbouring village had the distinction of possessing a weather prophet, with the reputation also of an astrologer; he could be seen when the stars were gleaming brightly, late at night, gazing upwards and making his deductions, though, in reality, I fancy, his inspiration came from the study of almanacs which profess to foretell the future. He was quiet and reserved, with a spare figure, dark complexion, and an abstracted expression. Occasionally I could induce him to talk, but he did not like to be "drawn." He told me, as one of his original conceptions, that he thought the good people were accommodated in the after-life within the limits of the stars of good influence, and that the wicked had to be content with those of an opposite character.
The proverb about March dust, and "A dry March and a dry May for oldEngland," are both apposite, for they are busy months on the land, anda wet March amounts to a national disaster; but everyone forgivesApril when showery, for we all know that "April showers bring forthMay flowers." Shakespeare, too, says:
"When daffodils begin to peer,With heigh! the doxy over the dale,Why, then comes in the sweet of the year."
A charming sentiment and charmingly rendered, but possibly more accurate when the Old Style was in vogue, and the seasons were nearly a fortnight later than now. The modern "daffys" too, no doubt, "begin to peer" somewhat earlier than those of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
During a very hot summer I suggested to the Board of Agriculture that it might be worth while to experiment with explosions of artillery, with a view of inducing the clouds to discharge the rain they evidently contain when they keep passing day after day without bursting. I had seen it stated that many great battles had ended in tremendous downpours, and that it was believed that the rain was caused by concussion from the explosions. The Board replied, however, that experiments had been conducted in America for the purpose, without in any way substantiating the theory; and the experiences of the Great War have since conclusively proved that it has no foundation.
As to weather signs, I have already quoted the original pronouncement of my carpenter, T.G., that "the indications for rain are very similar to the indications for fine weather," and there is a good deal in his words. My own conclusion, after fifty years of out-door life on the farm, in the woods, in the garden, at out-door games, and on the roads, is that fine weather brings fine weather, and wet weather brings wet weather, in other words, it never rains but it pours, in an extended sense.
My impression is that when the ground is dry there is a minimum of capillary attraction between it and the clouds, and though the sky may look threatening they do not easily break into rain. On the other hand, when the ground is thoroughly wet and evaporation is active, capillary attraction tends to unite earth and clouds, and rain results. We all know that hill-tops receive showers which frequently pass over the vales without falling, probably because of the greater proximity of the hills. In a long drought a violent thunderstorm, which soaks the ground, will often be followed by a complete change of weather, as the result of contact established between the earth and the clouds.
The best description I know of a really hot and cloudless day is that by Coleridge in theAncient Mariner:
"The sun came up upon the left,Out of the sea came he;And he shone bright, and on the rightWent down into the sea."
The succession of monosyllables expresses most forcibly the monotony of a day of blazing sunshine, unruffled by a cloud; and the absence of incident illustrates the remorseless march of the dominant sun across the heavens.
Very little of my time has been spent in London or any other town, and my early recollections of passing through London on my way to or from school after or before the holidays are of very depressing weather conditions—fog, greasy streets and pavements, or a sun veiled in a haze of smoky vapour. Even when I went to Lord's annually in July to see the Eton and Harrow match my recollection of the weather is of dull, sultry heat and oppression of spirits. Cricket never seemed the same game as I knew and loved at Harrow, or in my own home in Surrey; there was an unreality about it, and a black coat and top hat were insufferably uncongenial.
I am able, as an eye-witness on one of these occasions, to write of an incident which, I think, has been almost forgotten. It was within a year of the marriage of King Edward, then Prince of Wales, and Queen Alexandra. A ball had been hit almost to the boundary, but was stopped by a spectator close to the ropes, thrown in to the fielder, and smartly returned to the wicket-keeper. The batsmen took it for granted that it was a boundary hit, and were changing ends when, one man being out of his ground, the wicket was put down, the wicket-keeper not recognizing that the ball was "dead." The umpire gave the man "out." The man demurred, and immediately shouts arose on all sides: "Out!" "Not out!" "Out!" "Not out!" "Out!" "Not out!" risingin crescendoto 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 space 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 circumstances, 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 circumstance 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 passengers 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 inBracebridge Hallalways 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 capYe 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 hillsYou'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 passed 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 assurance 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 passer-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 circumstances 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."
"There rolls the deep where grew the tree.O Earth, what changes hast thou seen!"—In Memoriam.
"With many a curve my banks I fretBy many a field and fallow,And many a fairy foreland setWith willow-weed and mallow.
"I chatter, chatter, as I flowTo join the brimming 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 retarded 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 assume 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 shells 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-cocks 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-cock 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 bumped 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 constitute a danger to horses and carts. The village pundits therefore, in council duly assembled, 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 boardis covered with waterit 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 Sussex, 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, inThe 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 analyst, 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 Saturday 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 Saturday 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 wassopleased," 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 passed 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 attitude of the towns was one of apathy and indifference, like that of the General inBracebridge 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 glass 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 class 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 passed 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 passed, they appear already to have lapsed again into an attitude 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 passed 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 tit 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. Tits 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 inThe 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.
"From July 18 to 22 I was at Thorney Hill in the New Forest, some seven miles behind Christchurch. Owing to the abnormal drought the bogs and bog-streams at the foot of the hill westward were all but dry; a dense mist, however, sometimes rose from them at night. On July 19, and the three following nights, the Will-o'-the-wisps were in great form over the bog. They were like small balls of bluish fire, which projected themselves with hops and jerks across the most inaccessible parts of the bog, starting always, so far as could be told, from where a little stagnant moisture still remained. They moved with an erratic velocity, so to speak, appearing and reappearing at distances of several hundred yards. There wasn't the slightest doubt of their authenticity.
"The inhabitants of Thorney Hill, I believe, regarded these appearances with alarm, as being, though not exactly novelties, harbingers of much misfortune. But the drought was quite bad enough, without having the Jack-o'-lanterns to accentuate it!"
This instance was the more remarkable as I have never succeeded in finding anyone, even among people who are constantly on duty in the Forest, who could testify to having seen a Will-o'-the-wisp.
Waterspouts are, I believe, more frequently seen at sea than on land, but I have an account from my brother, Mr. F.E. Savory, of one he saw many years ago in Wiltshire. He writes:
"When I was at Manningford Bruce in 1873 or 1874, I saw a dense black cloud travelling towards the southeast, the lower part of which became pointed like a funnel in shape, waving about as it descended until, I suppose, the attraction of the earth overcame the cohesion of the cloud's vapour, and it discharged itself. I could see it looking lighter and lighter, from the middle outwards, until it was entirely dispersed. I heard that the water fell on the side of the Down near Collingbourne, about five miles off, and washed some of the soil away, but I did not see that. The weather was stormy, but I do not remember the time of year or any other particulars."
It would seem that a waterspout is caused by a whirlwind entering a cloud and gathering vapour together by its rotary action into such a heavy mass that it descends in the funnel shape described. We are all familiar with the small whirlwinds that travel across a road in summer, carrying the dust round and round with them; these are called "whirly-curlies" in Worcestershire, and are regarded as a sign of fine weather. I have sometimes seen quite a strong one crossing rows of hay just ready to carry, cutting a clean track through each row, and leaving the ground bare where it passed. The hay is often carried to a great height, and sometimes dropped in an adjoining field.
On a bright morning in summer one often sees, a little distance away, a tremulous or flickering movement in the air, not far from the ground, which Tennyson refers to inIn Memoriam, as, "The landscape winking thro' the heat"; and again inThe Princess:
"All the rich to comeReels, as the golden Autumn woodland reelsAthwart the smoke of burning weeds."
I am told that this appearance is "due to layers of air of different degrees of refracting power, in motion, relative to one another. Air at different temperatures will refract light differently." In Hampshire this phenomenon is known by the pretty name of "the summer dance."
Since I came to the Forest I have seen two very curious and, I think, unusual natural appearances. As I was cycling one rather dull afternoon from Wimborne to Ringwood, I noticed a colourless rainbow, or perhaps I should say, "mist-bow," for there was no rain, and the sun was partially obscured. The sun was about south-west, and the bow was north-east; it was merely a series of well-defined but colourless segments of circles, close to each other but shaded so as to make them distinguishable, arranged exactly like a rainbow but without a trace of colour beyond a grey uniformity. It was on my left for several miles, perhaps half of the total distance of nine miles between the two towns.
Cycling another day between Lyndhurst and Burley, I reached the east entrance of Burley Lodge, which is on higher ground than the farm spread out to the right in the valley. The whole valley was filled with thick white mist, as level as a lake, so that nothing could be seen of the fields. The setting sun was low down at the further extremity of the valley, and the surface of the mist-lake reflected its rays in a rosy sheen, with a track of brighter light in the middle, stretching from the far end of the lake in a broad path almost to where I was standing; just as we see the track of sunlight or moonlight, sometimes, on the sea, from the shore. This phenomenon is not uncommon when one is looking down from the top of a hill in the sunshine, upon a valley full of mist, but I have never seen it before from comparatively low ground, as on this occasion.
My summers at Aldington were nearly always too busy to allow me to take a holiday, except for a very few days, but when the urgent work of the year was over, the harvest completed, and the hops and the fruit picked, we always had a clear month away from home, about the middle of October to the middle of November; and, as we found the autumn much less advanced in the south than in the midlands, we often spent the time on the south coast or in the Isle of Wight, and we were nearly always favoured by fine weather. On one of these occasions, when we were exploring the whole island on bicycles, I never once found it necessary to carry a waterproof cape, though in the course of this visit we rode over 600 miles.
[Illustration: NOTE. THE CHANGING COURSE OF STREAMS.]