LECTURE V.COUNTRY LIFE AND THE SMALLER TOWNS.
COUNTRY LIFE AND THE SMALLER TOWNS.
Inthe last Lecture we saw how the history of England, and the monuments which have come from it, surround the schools and the universities, and influence the upbringing of the men whom we know here in India as officers of the Army and of the Navy, as Civil Servants, and as merchants. Let us now, however, describe the early surroundings of those whom we know chiefly as the rank and file of the Army and as the sailors of the Navy.
Let us consider the homes of the people outside the Metropolis—the small towns scattered over the whole land, and the hundreds of little villages, the farms, and the cottages in the green countrysides and by the shores of the sea.
1.View of Chipping Campden.
Here is the little town of Chipping Campden, in the West of England, set in a valley amid low hills and shaded by green trees, with its church tower rising in the centre. Do you see the sloping roofs of the houses which speak of a rainy climate, and the chimneys rising from their ridges, telling of the cold winters and of blazing fires round which in the long evenings the families gather?
2.Street in Chipping Campden.
This is a street in the same little town of Chipping Campden. Is it not peaceful and silent? How different the lives of the people brought up here from those who live in the sound of the unending traffic of London!
3.A Business Street.
Here is another street in a country town, with shops where food and clothing are sold. There is an inn, too, which bears the sign of a Cock. The use ofsigns instead of names to distinguish houses is an old custom which has survived from the times when men could not read. See the school children gathered in the street watching the photographer who is taking the picture.
4.A Residential Street.
Next we go into a residential street, where are the houses of the doctors and the lawyers of the little town. Some of the shopkeepers also dwell here, for when they can afford it they like to withdraw in the evening from their shops. These people are known in England as the middle classes, for they are neither very rich nor very poor. From among their children have come many who have helped to make England what she is.
5.Town Church and Town Hall.
In the middle of the town there is the Church and also the Town Hall where meetings of the inhabitants are from time to time held for the management of local affairs. This slide, for instance, is taken in the little town of Cirencester. In front is the Town Hall, and in rear of it the Church with its tower.
6.A Market.
These small towns could not exist if it were not for the country around them. On six days of the week they are silent and sleepy, but on the seventh they wake up and do much business. This day, known as Market Day, brings the farmers and their wives from all the country round to sell their produce and to buy in the shops their requirements for the week. Two or three times a year the market is specially a large one, and is known as a Fair. Here is a Fair in the little town of Burford. As you look down the street you can see the green country without. But the street is full of people, and there are stalls set up in it because there is no room for all the purchasers in the shops. Therefore it is, that these small towns are known as Market Towns.
7.Yarmouth.
Some of the towns round the coast, however, are differently employed. Theydepend not so much upon weekly markets as upon their fisheries. Here is a scene at Yarmouth, with a number of old fishermen waiting with their baskets on the quay for the return of the boats.
8.Newlyn Harbour.
9.Landing Fish.
In the next slide we have the fishing fleet of Newlyn, lying sheltered in its harbour. And then we have a view of the boats on their return deeply laden with their catch. Since Britain consists of islands and has shores on all sides, the fisheries have much importance.
But after all, if we would find the old life of England in which have been reared the generations of men who have spread over the whole world making the Empire and its commerce, we must go not only outside London, but outside even the market and fishing towns into the rural country.
10.A Country Road, Saintbury.
Here is a road running past a farmhouse and cottages, with a flock of geese in the foreground which are being reared for food in the winter.
11.A Village Street.
12.Village Church and School.
And here we enter a village, with its church visible up the street. A village differs from a town in having no weekly market. It has fewer shops, and is generally smaller. It is the place where the labourers live who work on the surrounding farms. In its centre three buildings generally stand near together. There is the church, not infrequently several centuries old, and round the church is the churchyard with the graves of twenty generations of the past villagers. Then there is the school, and thirdly, there is the house of the clergyman. These are the little institutions found in each of the several thousand villages which are scattered at intervals of a mile or two over the whole of the British Isles. Some of them contain two or three hundred inhabitants, and some of them a thousand or twelve hundred.
13.Stoke Poges Church.
Here is another village church, with a pointed spire instead of a blunt tower. It is clothed, as you see, with creepers, and around are the tombstones in the graveyard. There are generally bells in the towers and spires of these country churches. On a bright Sunday morning, when labour has ceased and the people take their weekly rest, these bells ring merrily through all the green country summoning the people, rich and poor, to assemble in the church for the worship of God.
14.Cottages, Bisham, Berks.
Let us now look at some of the houses which stand not even in villages, but quite alone, or in groups of two or three, amid the fields. Beside this road we have a short row of cottages clothed with creepers, like the church that we saw just now, each with its little garden in front. Do you see the labourer’s wife standing at her door with a child on her arm and a dog at her feet? It is from thousands upon thousands of such little homes as these, that have come the soldiers and sailors who have fought for England, and the workmen who have worked in the factories and have made England the great industrial and commercial country which we know.
15.A Country Inn.
Next we have a little inn by the roadside with a cart stopped beside it. The dog is waiting for his master, the carter, who has gone within to talk and rest and drink.
16.Mapledurham House.
Such is the quiet life of the humbler people in the country parts of England. But here and there through all the land there rises also the country home of a rich family. Of all the features of England, perhaps the most beautiful and the most indicative of peace and strength and wealth, are these country houses of the upper classes. We have one here surrounded by perfect trees and by spreading lawns of thick short green grass.
17.Interior at Long Marston, Charles I. kitchen.
Many of these houses are old, and have been little changed, though well cared for, during several generations. This, for instance, is a kitchen in one of them dating from 250 years ago. Do you note the great beam of oak which supports the ceiling? Oak is an English tree which, like teak in India, gives a timber as strong as iron.
18.Knole House.
Here is another and yet grander house, surrounded by one of those noble parks of which you heard in the last lecture.
19.Hunt Scene, Streatley, Berks.
You may imagine with what pleasure the leading men of England escape from their work in London, either in Parliament or in the Law Courts or in the City, to these quiet, proud homes in the country, where they may give themselves to sport both in winter and in summer—for the climate of England is rarely either too hot or too cold for activity throughout the day. Here, for instance, is a winter scene in a country park, with a pack of dogs, or, as they are called, hounds, in the foreground, for the hunting of the fox. The men on horseback are ready to follow the hounds across the country, leaping the hedgerows of which you heard in the third Lecture. With them you may notice two or three ladies on horseback, who also will follow the hounds and leap the hedges. That it is winter time you may tell from the leafless branches of most of the trees.
20.Nuneham Park.
On the other hand, we have here a summer scene in a country park with a cricket match in progress.
Now I think you can understand something of the country life of England. The village generally consists of the Squire, the Vicar, the Schoolmaster, the Farmers, and the Labourers. The Squire owns most of the land. He was educated at a great school. His sons become officers in the Army and in the Navy. He is the unpaid magistrate of the district, and lives in the great house in thepark. Beside him, and living in a smaller home, is the Vicar, who ministers on Sundays in the church and visits the people in their homes to help them in illness or trouble. In addition there are often Ministers of the Free Churches, for religion is a matter for each man’s conscience, notwithstanding the existence of a State Church. Beside the Vicar and the Ministers is the Schoolmaster, to whom by law the children must be sent to learn to read and write. Then there come the farmers, who rent pieces of land from the Squire, and farm them with the help of the labourers. The farmers live in farmhouses surrounded by cattle sheds and corn barns, and the labourers occupy cottages such as we have seen.
21.A Farmhouse.
All these dwellers in the country—squires, vicars, schoolmasters, farmers, and labourers, and also the tradesmen of the market towns, depend for their livelihood on the crops of the field. In one way or another they all receive a share of the harvests. Let us therefore spend a few moments in considering the operations of British agriculture. They are very different from those of a tropical country, and it is impossible to understand the writings of British authors unless you know something of the aspects of British agriculture. The centre of the farm is the farmhouse, such as we have here, with its outhouses for the farm implements, and for the young animals which require protection against the weather. In the centre of the picture you see the poultry, which are fed by the farmer’s wife and daughters, while the farmer and his sons are away in the fields. Close by the house a heap of firewood is laid ready for the winter, and there is also the farmer’s gig, in which he drives to sell his corn at the weekly market in the nearest town.
22.Hay Cutting: old style.
A great change has taken place of late in the methods of farming, for the steam engine has been applied to agriculture as well as to the industries. Let us look for a moment at the old style of farming which is now rapidly going out. Here, in a field surrounded by a hedge, are three menmowing grass with scythes. The grass will be left to dry in the sun; it will turn brown, and will then be heaped into a hay stack for the winter food of the farm horses.
23.Thrashing: old style.
Next we see the old method of thrashing corn. The man in the picture holds a flail, or rod jointed in the centre, with which he beats the corn, and so separates the grain from the straw.
24.Old Man Digging.
And here we have an old rustic digging the ground with a spade. Probably he is a man who can neither write nor read; for when he was a boy the children of country villages were not obliged to go to school.
25.Old Shepherd.
26.Old Woman.
Here is another such old rustic, a shepherd, who has spent his life in tending sheep. Probably he never went to London, or, indeed, to any of the large towns which have now been brought by railways to within an hour or two of his home. But quite likely he often has letters from a son who is a sailor in the Fleet in the China Seas, from another son who is a soldier in India, and from a daughter who is married to a farmer in Australia. And here is his wife, seated in a corner of the village church.
27.Mare and Foal.
28.Shire Horse.
29.Landseer’s “Blacksmith’s Shop.”
By far the most abundant crop in England is green grass, and the English farmer therefore keeps many animals to feed upon it. Here we have a mare and foal. The farm horses of England are much larger and thicker built than the small horses of most parts of the world. They are more powerful, but they are slower. Some of the English cart horses are nearly as large as an average elephant. Until modern times, when the steam engine was introduced, all the work of the farm was done by men and horses. Here is another grand horse,and here a picture painted by a great English artist, Landseer. It is owned by the English nation and hung in the National Gallery, which stands in Trafalgar Square. The picture is in the midst of London, but, as you see, it represents a country scene, the shop of a shoeing smith, who is putting an iron shoe on to the hoof of a horse in order that it may not be injured by the paved roads. Beside the horse you see two other of the animals that are common in every English countryside, a donkey, which is the poor man’s horse, and a dog. Among the northern nations, as you know, dogs are cared for and treated as companions.
30.Ploughing.
Here we have one of the chief operations of British farming in which horses and men work together. They are turning over the ground with the plough to prepare it for the seed. Ploughing is usually done in the autumn, so that the land may lie fallow, that is to say at rest, for a time before the crops begin to grow in the spring.
31.Wheat in Sheaf.
32.Carrying Corn.
With this coloured slide we come to harvest time. The grain has turned under the summer sun to a beautiful golden brown, and has been cut and set in these stooks, where it is drying in the hot August weather. Presently it will be taken away in wagons, drawn by horses, and stacked. Do you see on the ground the straight lines of stubble due to the fact that the seed from which the corn grew was cast into the straight furrows made by the plough? In this slide the last sheaves of the harvest are being gathered in. There will be much rejoicing in the village to-night because the harvest has been safely got, and rain storms have caused it no harm during the critical days after it had been cut, when it stood drying in the sun.
33.Reaping Machine.
The first farm machinery introduced in modern times was worked by horses not by steam engines. Forexample, in this slide we have a horse-drawn reaping machine employed to cut down corn, thus saving the hand-work of many men.
34.Thrashing Machine.
Here is a thrashing machine driven by a steam engine. The corn is placed on the top of the machine where stand the two men; it is caught into the running parts of the machine which are driven by the engine to the right hand; it is beaten in the machine so that the grain falls from the straw into the bags which you see, while the straw is lifted by the elevator on to the stack to the left hand, there to remain until required for the bedding of horses.
35.Cows.
36.Cattle chewing Cud.
Besides tilling the ground for the growth of corn, the farmers of Britain keep many millions of cattle and sheep which feed upon grass. Here is an ordinary country scene with cows, which are kept for the sake of their milk. One of the chief foods in these northern countries is the milk of cows, and the butter and cheese prepared from milk. These cows live upon the grass, which is kept green by the moist climate. Here we have cattle lying down chewing the cud.
37.Cattle Market, Faringdon.
Next is a scene on a market day in a small country town. It is a fair to which the farmers have brought in their cattle for sale.
38.Sheep.
39.Sheep with Shepherd and Dog.
The most numerous animals on British farms are the sheep. This is a fortunate fact, for wool is the most suitable material from which to manufacture the warm clothing needed during the northern winter. Here is a flock of sheep grazing. And here is another flock with the shepherd who tends them, and his dog. Sheep-dogs are usually of the kind known as Collies.
40.Sheep Dog.
41.Sheep Market: Chipping Campden.
They are very remarkable creatures. A well-trained Collie obeys the shepherd perfectly, and can bring a large flock of sheep to him or guide it in any direction that he orders. Here is a coloured photograph of a Collie dog. And lastly we have a sheep market, similar to the cattle market which we visited a moment ago.
These are the principal rural occupations of Britain, the growing of corn and the tending of cattle and sheep, but there are others, although on a smaller scale.
42.Hop Garden.
Here, for instance, we have a hop garden, where the creepers known as hops are grown upon poles, and supply a little fruit which, when dried, is used for the purpose of giving flavour to beer. Hops are picked in the hot weather, and a great number of people are required for the purpose. These people are, for the most part, got from the great city of London, for the part of England in which most hops grow is close to London. Once a year the very poorest of the poor people of London are carried out by train, and they camp for two or three weeks in tents in the hop country.
43.Apple Tree in Bloom.
44.Apple Blossom.
This is an apple tree in blossom. Later in the year it will bear a fruit which is used for the purpose of making a drink called cider. There are whole orchards of such apple trees, presenting a very beautiful sight in the spring-time when they are gay with blossom. Here is a colour photograph of apple blossom; you may easily imagine that when these flowers deck the trees the whole landscape is brilliant, not so much with green, as with pink and white—indeed, one of the great differences between England and the tropics is that in addition to green there is so much brilliant colour in the foliage. Not only have you these orchards of white and red, but the grassy fields are at times all golden with flowersthat are called buttercups and daisies, and, as we shall see presently, the trees in the autumn turn from green to brilliant shades of brown.
45.Apples.
Here is a basket of apple fruit, each with a rosy cheek on its green skin. In Britain other fruits take the place of the mango and guava, which are unknown in the north.
46.Strawberries.
47.Roses.
Fruit is grown in large quantity for the markets of the great town populations. Here in this slide is one of the finest of the northern fruits, the strawberry, which you probably know. See how it is coloured, like so many other things northern. And here is yet another crop of England. The vast cities with their millions of people—many of them well-to-do—demand in their houses the flowers of the country. Therefore there are parts of England where not merely corn and cattle, and not merely fruit, but also flowers are grown for the supply of the towns. This is the best known of the flowers of England, the rose, which grows also in other parts of the world, but is pre-eminently the national emblem of England, and praised as such in English poetry.
48.Hay-stack.
Let us turn for a moment finally to a side of English life which is different from all that we know here in the tropics. There are seasons in Britain, not rainy seasons and dry seasons, but seasons of heat and of cold. In the winter the vegetation stops growing, and there is little food in the fields for the animals. Then all the life of the land, animal and human, must be maintained by foresight, by the storage of the fruits of summer, or by the import of supplies from other countries. The cattle are kept alive by means of hay, that is to say, of grass cut in the summer, dried in the sun, heaped into hay-stacks, and there preserved until required in the winter. This is a hay-stack laid by for the winter supply of the animals.
49.Beech—Autumn Tints.
When the hay and the corn have been harvested and the apples have been gathered and turned to cider, and the roses have bloomed, and the strawberries have been eaten or boiled to jam, then the summer wanes, and a change sets in. Day by day, as September and October pass, the green leaves of the trees gradually turn to all manner of brilliant hues of red and brown, and presently, as the rains and the winds increase, they fall and litter all the ground as we see them here. At last, in November, the trees become naked, and show the tracery of their branches against the sky.
50.Park—Autumn Tints.
51.River Scene with Autumnal Beeches.
There are few more splendid natural scenes than those of the fall of the northern year. Let us look at one or two more of them photographed in colour. This is an English park in the autumn, and this a wood by a river bank.
52.VirginiaCreeper.
53.Hughenden Church—Autumn creepers.
Many English houses are covered with creepers which are green in the summer and then turn to red—to blood-red at times—before the leaves finally drop and leave the house naked. This is the Virginia Creeper, which did not originally grow in Britain, but was brought from America. And here is a church clothed with red Virginia Creeper. Green ivy is a creeper native to Britain. It clothes with green many old buildings throughout the winter, because its leaves are like leather, and thick, and can withstand the cold.
54.Leafless Elm Trees.
This is a December landscape. The trees have shed their leaves, and their naked boughs are clear against the sky. See the bleak appearance of the land, so that you may look over miles and miles of open country, though it is studded with many trees. To the eye of one accustomed to the tropical forest, England in the winter time is a naked and strange land.
55.Cottage, Winter Scene.
56.Winter Scene in Wood.
57.Frozen Lake side with hoar-frost.
58.Hockey on ice.
There are times when the cold is such that the rain is frozen and falls in hard stones, known as hail, and there are other times when the clouds themselves freeze, and then there fall white snow-flakes like little feathers, which accumulate on the ground, covering it with a white carpet which melts into water and disappears when the weather grows warm again. Here is a country cottage half buried in snow, and the snow is on the road and on the branches of the trees. And here is a wood-side, hung not with snow, but with hoar-frost. You know how dew stands on the leaves in the early morning. In Britain, in the winter time, the dew clings to the branches not as liquid water, but as a white feathery substance like snow, and yet it is not snow, for it has not fallen from the clouds in flakes, but has been formed from the air around, and clings by little stalks to all the branches, surrounding them and clothing them. Here is yet another scene of hoar-frost. The surface of the pool is frozen over, and has a covering of hard ice. All the ground is hard like iron; men cannot dig with spades, and even horses cannot draw the plough through the ground. The cattle are gathered into the sheds of the farms, where they are fed upon the hay which was saved for them in the summer. The nights are very long and the days are short—not like the tropical day and night, each approximately twelve hours in length. Even poor men must now be idle, and many spend time in active sports. Here, for instance, the game of hockey is being played on the ice, which is strong enough to bear people upon it safely. Here is one of the roots of the energy of the British race; it is bred in a climate which is warm enough for men to work in through most of the year but with every now and then a spell of frost, which appears to stimulate human activity. On the other handthe heat of the summer is rarely such that men must rest in the middle of the day.
59.Skating.
These men are skating on the ice which is very smooth. That they may glide the more easily they put skates on their feet—sharp steel edges which slip so easily that it requires some skill to stand upon them. It is an exhilarating sight to see men and women moving with the speed of railway trains, the blood aglow in their cheeks and their eyes flashing with pleasure.
60.Curling.
In Scotland men play the game of curling upon ice. The weights glide over the surface instead of rolling like balls.
61.Thames frozen over.
Lastly, we have a very curious scene. Once in every few years there comes a colder winter than usual, and then even the running water of considerable rivers will freeze. Here is the Thames frozen completely over and bearing many people.