Field and Hedgerow

R >> Richard Jefferies >> Field and Hedgerow

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While these pranks are played at Bethel let us glance a moment in another
direction down the same green country lane on the same bright summer day.
Let it be late in the afternoon of the Sunday, the swifts still wheeling,
the roses still blooming, blue-winged jays slipping in and out of the
beech trees. These hazel lanes were once the scene of Puritan marchings
to and fro, of Fifth Monarchy men who likened the Seven-hilled City to
the Beast; furious men with musket and pike, whose horses' hoofs had
defaced the mosaic pavements of cathedral. These hazel lanes, lovely
nut-tree boughs, with 'many an oak that grew thereby,' have been the
scene of historic events down from the days of St. Dunstan. In the quiet
of the Sunday afternoon, when the clashing of the bells was stilled,
there walked in the shade of the oaks a young priest and a lady. His
well-shaped form seemed the better shown by his flowing cassock; his
handsome face was refined by its air of late devotion. The lady, dressed
in the highest style of aristocratic fashion, that is to say with grace,
was evidently a member of good society. A little picture certainly: only
two figures, no pronounced action, no tragedy, yet what a meaning in that
cassock! It spoke of confession, of ritual, of transubstantiation, of all
the great historic romance of Rome ecclesiastical. The great romance of
Rome: its holy footsteps of St. Peter, its aerial dome of Michael Angelo,
its Vatican of ancient manuscripts, of beauteous statue and chariot--the
great romance of Rome, its Borgia, its dungeons and flames of the
Inquisition. A picture of two figures only, but consider the background.
Consider the thousands of broad English acres that now support great
monasteries and convents in quiet country places where one could scarce
expect to find a barn. The buildings are there; that is a solid fact,
take what view you like of them, or take none at all. There are men about
country roads with shaven crown and cassock whose dark Continental faces
have an unmistakable stamp of priesthood; faces that might be pictured
with those of the monks of old Spain. Women in long black cloaks, black
hoods and white coif, women with long black rosaries hanging from the
girdle, go to and fro among the wheat and the clover. One rubs one's
eyes. Are these the days of Friar Laurence and Juliet? Shall we meet the
mitred abbot with his sumpter mule? Shall we meet the mailed knights? In
some places whole villages belong to English monks, and there is not a
man or woman in them who is not a Catholic; there are even small country
towns which by dint of time, money, and territorial influence have been
re-absorbed, and are now as completely Catholic as they were before Henry
VIII. In these half-village half-towns you may chance on a busy market
day to come across a great building abutting on the street, and may
listen to the organ and the chant; there is incense and gorgeous
ceremony, the golden tinkle of the altar-bell. Bow your head, it is the
host; cross yourself, it is the mass. The butcher and the dealer are busy
with the sheep, but it is a saint's day. By-and-by no doubt we shall have
a village Lourdes at home, and miracles and pilgrimages and offerings and
shrines: the village will be right glad to see the pilgrims, if only they
come from the West End and have money in the purse. The village would be
very glad indeed of a miracle to bring it a shower of gold.

THE COUNTRY-SIDE: SUSSEX.

I

On the wall of an old barn by the great doors there still remains a
narrow strip of notice-board, much battered and weather-beaten: 'Beware
of steel ----' can be read, the rest has been broken off, but no doubt it
was 'traps.' 'Beware of steel traps,' a caution to thieves--a
reminiscence of those old days which many of our present writers and
leaders of opinion seem to think never existed. When the strong labourer
could hardly earn 7_s_. a week, when in some parishes scarcely half the
population got work at all, living, in the most literal sense, on the
parish, when bread was dear and the loaf was really life itself, then
that stern inscription had meaning enough. The granaries were full, the
people half starved. The wheat was threshed by the flail in full view of
the wretched, who could gaze through the broad doors at the golden grain;
the sparrows helped themselves, men dare not. At night men tried to steal
the corn, and had to be prevented by steel traps, like rats. To-day wheat
is so cheap, it scarcely pays to carry it to market. Some farmers have it
ground, and sell the flour direct to the consumer; some have used it for
feeding purposes--actually for hogs. The contrast is extraordinary.
Better let the hogs eat the corn than that man should starve. To-day the
sparrows are just as busy as ever of old, chatter, chirp around the old
barn, while the threshing machine hums, and every now and then lowers its
voice in a long-drawn descending groan of seemingly deep agony. Up it
rises again as the sheaves are cast in--hum, hum, hum; the note rises and
resounds and fills the yard up to the roof of the barn and the highest
tops of the ricks as a flood fills a pool, and overflowing, rushes abroad
over the fields, past the red hop-oast, past the copse of yellowing
larches, onwards to the hills. An inarticulate music--a chant telling of
the sunlit hours that have gone and the shadows that floated under the
clouds over the beautiful wheat. No more shall the tall stems wave in the
wind or listen to the bees seeking the clover-fields. The lark that sang
above the green corn, the partridge that sheltered among the yellow
stalks, the list of living things delighting in it--all have departed.
The joyous life of the wheat is ended--not in vain, for now the grain
becomes the life of man, and in that object yet more glorified. Outwards
the chant extending, reaches the hollows of the valley, rolling over the
shortened stubble, where the plough already begins the first verse of a
new time. A pleasant sound to listen to, the hum of the threshing, the
beating of the engine, the rustle of the straw, the shuffle shuffle of
the machine, the voices of the men, the occupation and bustle in the
autumn afternoon! I listened to it sitting in the hop-oast, whose tower,
like a castle turret, overlooks and domineers the yard. In the loft the
resounding hum whirled around, beating and rebounding from the walls, and
forcing its way out again through the narrow window. The edge, as it
were, of a sunbeam lit up the rude chamber crossed with unhewn beams and
roofed above with unconcealed tiles, whose fastening pegs were visible. A
great heap of golden scales lay in one corner, the hops fresh from the
drying. Up to his waist in a pocket let through the floor a huge giant of
a man trod the hops down in the sack, turning round and round, and now
his wide shoulders and now his red cheeks succeeded. The music twirled
him about as a leaf by the wind. Without the rich blue autumn sky; within
the fragrant odour of hops, the hum of the threshing circling round like
the buzz of an immense bee. As the hum of insects high in the atmosphere
of midsummer suits and fits to the roses and the full green meads, so the
hum of the threshing suits to the yellowing leaf and drowsy air of
autumn. The iteration of hum and monotone soothes, and means so much more
in its inarticulation than the adjusted chords and tune of written music.
Laughing, the children romped round the ricks; they love the threshing
and flock to it, they watch the fly-wheel rotating, they look in at the
furnace door when the engine-driver stokes his fire, they gaze
wonderingly at the gauge, and long to turn the brass taps; then with a
shout they rush to chase the unhappy mice dislodged from the corn. The
mice hide themselves in the petticoats of the women working at the
'sheening,' and the cottager when she goes home in the evening calls her
cat and shakes them out of her skirts. By a blue waggon the farmer stands
leaning on his staff. He is an invalid, and his staff, or rather pole, is
as tall as himself; he holds it athwart, one end touching the ground
beyond his left foot, the other near his right shoulder. His right hand
grasps it rather high, and his left down by his hip, so that the pole
forms a line across his body. In this way he is steadied and supported
and his whole weight relieved, much more so than it would be with an
ordinary walking-stick or with one in each hand. When he walks he keeps
putting the staff, which he calls a bat, in front, and so poles himself
along. There is an invalid boy in the yard, who walks with a similar
stick. The farmer is talking with a friend who has looked in from the
lane in passing, and carries a two-spean spud, or Canterbury hoe, with
points instead of a broad blade. They are saying that it is a 'pretty
day,' 'pretty weather'--it is always 'pretty' with them, instead of fine.
Pretty weather for the hopping; and so that leads on to climbing up into
the loft and handling the golden scales. The man with the hoe dips his
brown fist in the heap and gathers up a handful, noting as he does so how
the crisp, brittle, leaf-life substance of the hops crackles, and yet
does not exactly break in his palm. They must be dry, yet not too dry to
go to powder. They cling a little to the fingers, adhering to the skin,
sticky. He looks for rust and finds none, and pronounces it a good
sample. 'But there beant nothen' now like they old Grapes used to be,' he
concludes. The pair have not long gone down the narrow stairs when a
waggon stops outside in the lane, and up comes the carter to speak with
the 'drier'--the giant trampling round in the pocket--and to see how the
hops 'be getting on.' In five minutes another waggoner looks in, then a
couple of ploughboys, next a higgler passing by; no one walks or rides or
drives past the hop-kiln without calling to see how things are going on.
The carters cannot stay long, but the boys linger, eagerly waiting a
chance to help the 'drier,' even if only to reach him his handkerchief
from the nail. Round and round in the pocket brings out the perspiration,
and the dust of the hops gets into the air-passages and thickens on the
skin of his face. One of the lads has to push the hops towards him with a
rake. 'Don't you step on 'em too much, that'll break 'em.' On the light
breeze that comes now and then a little chaff floats in at the open
window from the threshing. A crooked sort of face appears in the doorway,
the body has halted halfway up--a semi-gipsy face--and the fellow thrusts
a basket before him on the floor. 'Want any herrings?' 'No, thankie--no,'
cries the giant. 'Not to-day, measter; thusty enough without they.'
Herrings are regularly carried round in hop-time to all the gardens, and
there is a great sale for them among the pickers. By degrees the 'drier'
rises higher in the pocket, coming up, as it were, through the floor
first his shoulders, then his body, and now his knees are visible. This
is the ancient way of filling a hop pocket; a machine is used now in
large kilns, but here, where there is only one cone, indicative of a
small garden, the old method is followed.

The steps on which I sit lead up to the door of the cone. Inside, the
green hops lie on the horsehair carpet, and the fumes of the sulphur
burning underneath come up through them. A vapour hangs about the surface
of the hops; looking upwards, the diminishing cone rises hollow to the
cowl, where a piece of blue sky can be seen. Round the cone a strip of
thin lathing is coiled on a spiral; could any one stand on these steps
and draw the inside of the cone? Could perspective be so managed as to
give the idea of the diminishing hollow and spiral? the side opposite
would not be so difficult, but the bit this side, overhead and almost
perpendicular, and so greatly foreshortened, how with that? It would be
necessary to make the spectator of the drawing feel as if this side of
the cone rose up from behind his head; as if his head were just inside
the cone. Would not this be as curious a bit of study as any that could
be found in the interior of old Continental churches, which people go so
many miles to see? Our own land is so full of interest. There are
pictures by the oldest Master everywhere in our own country, by the very
Master of the masters, by Time, whose crooked signature lies in the
corner of the shadowy farmhouse hearth.

Beneath the loft, on the ground-floor, I found the giant's couch. The bed
of a cart had been taken off its wheels, forming a very good bedstead,
dry and sheltered on three sides. On the fourth the sleeper's feet were
towards the charcoal fire. Opening the furnace door, he could sit there
and watch the blue and green tongues of sulphur flame curl round about
and above the glowing charcoal, the fumes rising to the hops on the
horsehair high over. The 'hoppers' in the garden used to bring their
kettles and pots to boil, till the practice grew too frequent, and was
stopped, because the constant opening of the furnace wasted the heat. The
sulphur comes in casks. A sulphur cask sawn down the middle, with a bit
left by the head for cover, is often used by the hoppers as a cradle.
Another favourite cradle is made from a trug basket, the handle cut off.
It is then like half a large eggshell, with cross pieces underneath to
prevent it from canting aside. This cradle is set on the bare ground in
the garden; when they move one woman takes hold of one end and a second
of the other, and thus carry the infant. If you ask them, they will find
you a 'hop-dog,' a handsome green caterpillar marked with black velvet
stripes and downy bands between. Their labour usually ends early in the
afternoon.

The giant at the kiln must watch and bide his time the night through till
the hops are ready to be withdrawn from the cone. He is alone. Deep
shadows gather round the farmstead and the ricks, and there is not a
sound, nothing but the rustle of a leaf falling from the hollow oak by
the gateway. But at midnight, just as the drier is drawing the hops, a
thunderstorm bursts, and the blue lightning lights up the red cone
without, blue as the sulphur flames creeping over the charcoal within. It
is lonely work for him in the storm. By day he has many little things to
do between the greater labours, to make the pockets (or sacks) by sewing
the sackcloth, or to mark the name of the farmer and the date with
stencil plates. For sewing up the mouth of the pocket when filled there
is a peculiar kind of string used; you may see it hanging up in any of
the country 'stores;' they are not shops, but stores of miscellaneous
articles. He must be careful not to fill his pockets too full of hops,
not to tread them too closely, else the sharp folk in the market will
suspect that unfair means have been resorted to to increase the weight,
and will cut the pocket all to pieces to see if it contains a few bricks.
Nor must it be too light; that will not do.

In this district, far from the great historic hop-fields of Kent, the
hops are really grown in gardens, little pieces often not more than half
an acre or even less in extent. Capricious as a woman, hops will only
flourish here and there; they have the strongest likes and dislikes, and
experience alone finds out what will suit them. These gardens are always
on a slope, if possible in the angle of a field and under shelter of a
copse, for the wind is the terror, and a great gale breaks them to
pieces; the bines are bruised, bunches torn off, and poles laid
prostrate. The gardens being so small, from five to forty acres in a
farm, of course but few pickers are required, and the hop-picking becomes
a 'close' business, entirely confined to home families, to the cottagers
working on the farm and their immediate friends. Instead of a scarcity of
labour, it is a matter of privilege to get a bin allotted to you. There
are no rough folk down from Bermondsey or Mile End way. All staid,
stay-at-home, labouring people--no riots; a little romping no doubt on
the sly, else the maids would not enjoy the season so much as they do.
But there are none of those wild hordes which collect about the greater
fields of Kent. Farmers' wives and daughters and many very respectable
girls go out to hopping, not so much for the money as the pleasant
out-of-door employment, which has an astonishing effect on the health.
Pale cheeks begin to glow again in the hop-fields. Children who have
suffered from whooping-cough are often sent out with the hop-pickers;
they play about on the bare ground in the most careless manner, and yet
recover. Air and hops are wonderful restoratives. After passing an
afternoon with the drier in the kiln, seated close to a great heap of
hops and inhaling the odour, I was in a condition of agreeable excitement
all the evening. My mind was full of fancy, imagination, flowing with
ideas; a sense of lightness and joyousness lifted me up. I wanted music,
and felt full of laughter. Like the half-fabled haschish, the golden
bloom of the hops had entered the nervous system; intoxication without
wine, without injurious after-effect, dream intoxication; they were wine
for the nerves. If hops only grew in the Far East we should think wonders
of so powerful a plant. At hop-picking a girl can earn about 10_s_. a
week, so that it is not such a highly paid employment as might be
supposed from the talk there is about it. The advantages are sideways, so
to say; a whole family can work at the same time, and the sum-total
becomes considerable. Hopping happily comes on just after corn harvest,
so that the labourers get two harvest-times. The farmers find it an
expensive crop. It costs 50_l_. or 60_l_. to pick a very small garden,
and if the Egyptian plague of insects has prevailed the price at market
will not repay the expenditure. The people talk much of a possible duty
on foreign hops. The hop farmer should have a lady-bird on his seal ring
for his sign and token, for the lady-bird is his great friend. Lady-birds
(and their larvae) destroy myriads of the aphides which cause rust, and a
flight of lady-birds should be welcomed as much as a flight of locusts is
execrated in other countries.

II.

One of the hop-picking women told me how she went to church and the
parson preached such a curious sermon, all about our 'innerds' (inwards,
insides), and how many 'boanes' we had, and by-and-by 'he told us that we
were the only beasts who had the use of our hands.' Years since at
village schools the girls used to swallow pins; first one would do it,
then another, presently half the school were taking pins. Ignorant of
physiology! Yet they did not seem to suffer; the pins did not penetrate
the pleura or lodge in the processes. Now Anatomy climbs into the pulpit
and shakes a bony fist at the congregation. That is the humerus of it, as
Corporal Nym might say. At the late election--the cow election--the
candidates were Brown, Conservative, and Stiggins, Liberal. The day after
the polling a farm labourer was asked how he filled up his voting paper.
'Oh,' said he full of the promised cow, 'I doan't care for that there
Brown chap, he bean't no good; zo I jest put a cross agen he, and voted
for Stiggins.' The dream of life was accomplished, the labourer had a
vote, and--irony--he voted exactly opposite to his intent.

Too-whoo! ooo!--the sound of a horn,--the hunt was up; but this was not
the hunting season. Looking out of the kiln door I saw a boy running at
full speed down the lane with a small drain-pipe tucked under his arm. He
stopped, put the pipe to his mouth, and blew a blast on this 'dread
horn,' then jumped through a gap in the hedge and disappeared. They were
playing fox and hounds; who but a boy would have thought of using a
drain-pipe for a horn? It gave a good note, too. In and about the kiln I
learned that if you smash a frog with a stone, no matter how hard you hit
him, he cannot die till sunset. You must be careful not to put on any new
article of clothing for the first time on a Saturday, or some severe
punishment will ensue. One person put on his new boots on a Saturday, and
on Monday broke his arm. Some still believe in herbs, and gather
wood-betony for herb tea, or eat dandelion leaves between slices of dry
toast. There is an old man living in one of the villages who has reached
the age of a hundred and sixty years, and still goes hop-picking. Ever so
many people had seen him, and knew all about him; an undoubted fact, a
public fact; but I could not trace him to his lair. His exact whereabouts
could not be fixed. I live in hopes of finding him in some obscure 'Hole'
yet (many little hamlets are 'Holes,' as Froghole, Foxhole). What an
exhibit for London! Did he realise his own value, he would soon come
forth. I joke, but the existence of this antique person is firmly
believed in. Sparrows are called 'spadgers.' The cat wandering about got
caught in the rat-clams--_i.e._ a gin. Another cat was the miller's
favourite at the windmill, a well-fed, happy, purring pussy, fond of the
floury miller--he as white as snow, she as black as a coal. One day pussy
was ingeniously examining the machinery, when the wind suddenly rose, the
sails revolved, and she was ground up, fulfilling the ogre's
threat--'I'll grind his bones to make my bread.' This was not so sad as
the fate of the innkeeper's cow. You have read the 'Arabian Nights'--that
book of wisdom, for in truth the stories are no stories; they are the
records of ancient experience, the experience of a thousand years, and
some of them are as true and as deeply to be pondered on as anything in
the holiest books the world reverences. You remember the Three Calenders,
each of whom lost an eye--struck out in the most arbitrary and cruel
fashion. The innkeeper had a cow, a very pretty, quiet cow, but in time
it came about that her left horn, turning inwards, grew in such a manner
that it threatened to force the point into her head. To remedy this the
top of the horn was sawn off and a brass knob fastened on the tip, as is
the custom. The cow passed the summer in the meadows with the rest, till
by-and-by it was found that she had gone blind in the left eye. It
happened in this way: the rays of the sun heated the brass knob and so
destroyed the sight. Unable to call attention to its suffering, the poor
creature was compelled to endure, and could not escape. Now the Three
Calenders could speak, and had the advantage of human intelligence, and
yet each lost an eye, and they were as helpless in the hands of fate as
this poor animal.

Down in one of the hamlets there was a forge to which all the workpeople
who wanted any tools sharpened carried their instruments, the smith being
able to put a better edge on. Other blacksmiths or carpenters, if they
required a particularly good edge for some purpose, came to him. This art
he had acquired from his grandfather as a sort of heirloom or secret. The
grandfather while at work used to trouble and puzzle himself how to get a
very sharp edge, and at length one night he dreamed how to do it. From
that time he became prosperous. If a celebrated sonata was revealed in a
dream, why not the way to sharpen a chisel?

When he was tired the drier said he was 'dreggy.' They were talking of
the lambs, and how that dry season they had scarcely any sweetbreads. The
sweetbreads were so scanty, the butchers did not even offer them for
sale; the lambs had fed on dry food. In seasons when there was plenty of
grass and green food they had good large sweetbreads, white as milk. The
character of the food does thus under some circumstances really alter the
condition of an organ. The sweetbread is the pancreas; now a deficient
pancreatic action is supposed to play a great part in consumption and
other wasting diseases. Have we here, then, an indication that when the
pancreas may be suspected plenty of succulent food and plenty of liquid
are nature's remedies? We looked over at the pigs in the sty. They were
rooting about in a mess of garbage. 'Oh, what dirty things pigs are!'
said a lady. 'Yes, ma'am; they're rightly named,' said he. Some
scientific gentleman in the district had a large telescope with which he
made frequent observations, and at times would let a labouring man look
at the moon. 'Ah,' said our friend, shaking his head in a solemn,
impressive way, 'my brother, he see through it; he see great rocks and
seas up there. He say he never want to see through it no more. He wish he
never looked through him at all.' The poor man was dreadfully frightened
at what he had seen in the moon. At first I laughed at the story and the
odd idea of a huge, great fellow being alarmed at a glance through a
telescope. Since then, however, on reflection, it seems to me perfectly
natural. He was illiterate; he had never read of astronomy; to him it was
really like a sudden peep into another world, for the instrument was
exceptionally powerful, and the view of the sunlight on the peaks and the
shadows in the valleys must have been extraordinary to him. There was
nothing to laugh at; the incident shows what a great and wonderful thing
it is that rocks and mountains should be whirled along over our heads.
The idea has become familiarised to us by reading, but the fact is none
the less marvellous. This man saw the fact first, before he had the idea,
and he had sufficient imagination to realise it. At the village post
office they ask for 'Letterhead, please, sir,' instead of a stamp, for it
is characteristic of the cottager that whatever words he uses must be
different from those employed by other people. Stamp is as familiar to
him as to you, yet he prefers to say 'letterhead'--because he does. There
are many curious old houses, some of them timbered, still standing in
these parts. The immense hearths which were once necessary for burning
wood are now occupied with 'duck's-nest' grates, so called from the bars
forming a sort of nest. In one of the hamlets the women touched their
hats to us.

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