Chapter III

A gipsy encampment--A puzzling matter--Farming and farmers past and
present--An ancient market-town--A picturesque bit of old-world
architecture--Gleaners--Time’s changes--A house in two counties--A
wayside inn--The commercial value of the picturesque.

On one of the grassy wastes by the roadside, a sheltered corner overhung by branching elms, we espied a gipsy encampment. A very effective and pretty picture the encampment made with its belongings and green setting of grass and foliage. There were three brilliantly-coloured caravans drawn up in an irregular line and partly screening from view the same number of brown tents; in and out of caravans and tents sun-tanned and gay-kerchiefed children were noisily rampaging; from amidst the brown tents a spiral film of faint blue smoke lazily ascended, to be lost to sight in the bluer sky above; and to complete a ready-made picture, the gipsies’ horses were tethered close at hand, grazing on the rough sward. Truly the gipsy is a picturesque personage, though I have to confess he is not much beloved in the country; yet I should regret to have him improved entirely away, for he does bring colour and the flavour of wild, free life on to the scene, well suiting the English landscape.

The gipsy, for reasons best known to himself, is apt to resent the advances of strangers, even when made in the most amiable manner. The artist, who, for the sake of his picturesqueness and paintable qualities, is inclined to overlook the gipsy’s possible sins of commission on other people’s property, finds it difficult to sketch him; for myself, I am content to “snap-shot” him photographically on passing by, as I did on this occasion; which proceeding, however, he was prompt to resent with some gruffly muttered exclamation, to which we chaffingly replied, in the blandest of voices, “But you know a cat may look at a king.” Upon which he shouted after us, not in the politest of tones, “Yes, but a photograph machine ain’t a cat, and I ain’t a king, nohow,” and we felt that after all the gipsy had the best of the skirmish in words. The gipsy is manifestly no fool, or, with so many enemies on all sides, he would hardly have held his own for so long, and be extant and apparently flourishing as he is to-day. “It’s the gipsy against the world,” as a farmer once remarked to me, “and bless me if the gipsy don’t somehow score in the struggle.”

As we passed by the encampment, the incense of burning wood, mingled with sundry savoury odours, came wafted our way on the quiet air, and it appeared to us that a gipsy’s life in the summer time was a sort of continuous picnic, not without its charms. Such a charm it has indeed for some minds, that we have more than once on previous expeditions actually met imitations of the real article in the shape of lady and gentleman gipsies (the term truly seems

[Sidenote: _CARAVANNING_]

rather a misnomer), touring about in smartly turnedout caravans, driven by liveried coachmen. But all this seems to me far too respectable and luxurious to be quite delightful. The dash of Bohemianism about it is absurdly artificial; moreover, the coming of a caravan, both from its size and unfamiliar appearance, of necessity invites an amount of attention that is not always desirable, and is frequently very annoying. Speaking for myself, I must say that when I travel I endeavour to attract as little notice as possible; I go to observe, not to be observed. Still, every one to his taste. If I have not become a caravannist myself, it is certainly not from want of having the charms, real or imagined, of that wandering and expensive life on wheels instilled into me by a friend who owns a pleasure caravan, and has travelled over a goodly portion of southern England in it, though he had to confess to me, under close cross-examination, that there were certain “trifling” drawbacks connected with the amateur gipsy’s life: first, there was the aforementioned unavoidable publicity that a large caravan entails; then there was the slow pace such a cumbrous conveyance imposes on you at all times; the heat of the interior caused by the sun beating on the exterior in hot summer days; to say nothing of having to go, at the end of a long day’s journey, in search of camping ground for the night, entailing often a loss of time and a good deal of trouble before suitable quarters are found and permission to use them is obtained; besides this, there is stabling to secure, and a foraging expedition has to be undertaken, hardly a pleasure should the weather be wet! Whilst a simple inn is all that the more modest and less encumbered driving-tourist needs.

As we proceeded on our way, our attention was presently arrested by something strange and quite novel to us: on the telegraph wires, that stretched forth in long lines by the roadside, were suspended numerous little square bits of tin, and this for a considerable distance. The bits of tin, as they were swayed about by the wind, made weird music on the wires. Had we chanced to have driven that way at night, and heard those sounds coming directly down from the darkness above, without being able to discover the cause, we should have been much mystified; indeed, some hyper-nervous people passing there in the dark, under the same circumstances of wind and weather, might have come to the conclusion that this portion of the Great North Road was haunted. Such reputations have been established from lesser causes.

We were at a loss to account for the strange arrangement, so we looked about for somebody to question on the subject, and to solve the mystery for us if possible. There was not a soul in sight on the road, far off or near; for that matter, there never is when wanted. However, another look around revealed a man at work in a field near by, and to him we went and sought for the information desired, and this is the explanation we received in the original wording: “What be them tin things for on the telegraph postes?” They were really on the wires, but I have long ago discovered that you

[Sidenote: _A CHAT BY THE WAY_]

must not expect exactness from the average countryman. “Why, they be put there on account of the partridges. You see, the birds, when they be a-flying fast like, don’t always see them wires, and lots of them gets hurt and killed by striking themselves against them. You know, sir, as how partridges is partridges, and has to be taken great care on; if the quality only took the same care of the poor working-man, we should be happy.” The poor working-man, or labourer, in the present case did not appear very miserable or poorly clad, so we ventured to remark: “Well, you don’t seem particularly unhappy anyhow.” At the same moment a small coin of the realm changed ownership in return for the information imparted, and we went our way, and the man resumed his work, after promising to drink our very good healths that very night, and we saw no reason to doubt that the promise would be faithfully kept. The one thing you may positively rely upon the countryman doing, if you give him the opportunity, is “to drink your health.”

I may note here that during my many chats with the English labourer, in different counties far apart from each other, I have found their chief complaint (when they have one and venture to express it) is not so much the lowness of their wage, or the hardness of their work, as the poorness of their dwellings. Even the farm-hand begins to expect something better than the too often cold, damp, and draughty cottages that for generations past, in some parts of the country more than others, his “rude forefathers” had to put up with uncomplainingly, or otherwise. It seems to me that the best way of stopping the emigration from the country to the town is to make the country more attractive to the countryman by housing him better. “But cottages don’t pay,” as a landlord once informed me, and in this age it is difficult to make men enter into philanthropic enterprises--unless they return a certain _per cent_! A moneymaking generation likes to mix up philanthropy with profit--to do good openly and make it pay privately!

From the agricultural labourer upwards to the farmer, and from the farmer to the landowner, is an easy and natural transition. Now, since I commenced taking my holidays on the road several years ago, agricultural depression has, alas! gradually deepened, and my driving tours in rural England have brought me into frequent contact with both landowner and tenant farmer, and now and again with that sadly growing rarity the independent and sturdy yeoman who farms his own little freehold, perchance held by his ancestors for long centuries; with all of these I have conversed about the “bad times,” and have obtained, I think, a fairly comprehensive view of the situation from each standpoint. Endeavouring, as far as is possible with fallible human nature, to take the unprejudiced position of a perfectly neutral onlooker--a position that has caused me in turn to heartily sympathise with each party--the conclusion that I have reluctantly come to is this, that unless a great war should be a disturbing factor in

[Sidenote: _AN OLD SAYING_]

the case--an ever-possible contingency, by the way--with cheapened ocean transit and competition with new countries, land in Old England will no longer produce a profit to the modern tenant as well as to the landlord, and pay big tithes besides. It must be borne in mind that the tenant farmer of to-day has progressed like the rest of the world. He needs must possess a certain capital, and no longer is he or his family content with the simple life or pleasures of his predecessors. His wife, son, and daughters will not work on the farm, nor superintend the dairy, as of old; they all expect, and I think rightly expect, in an age when Board School children learn the piano and other accomplishments, a little more refinement and ease. And if this be so, I take it that the only way to solve the difficulty of making the land pay is somehow to get back the disappearing yeoman: the pride of possession will alone ensure prosperous farming. A local saying, possibly pertinent to the question, was repeated to me one day by a large tenant farmer in the Midlands, who had lost by farming well. It runs thus:

He who improves may flit,
He who destroys may sit.

And much truth underlies the proverbs of the countryside. Now a yeoman would not have to “flit” for improving his freehold, and a man does not generally destroy his own.

Whilst our thoughts had been wandering thus, the dog-cart had kept steadily on its way, and our reverie was broken by finding ourselves in the quaint old market-town of Baldock, driving down its spacious and sunny main street, which we noticed with pleasure was lined with trees, and bound by irregular-roofed buildings, mellowed by age into a delicious harmony of tints. Nature never mixes her colours crudely. I know no better study of colour harmonies than the weather-painting of a century-old wall, with its splashes of gold, and silver, and bronze lichen, its delicate greens and grays, its russets and oranges, and all the innumerable and indescribable hues that the summer suns and winter storms of forgotten years have traced upon its surface--hues blending, contrasting, and commingling, the delight of every true artist, and his despair to depict aright. With buildings age is the beautifier; even Tintern, with its roofless aisles and broken arches, could not have looked half as lovely in the full glory of its Gothic prime, when its walls were freshly set, its sculptures new, and traceries recently worked, as it looks now. No building, however gracefully designed, can ever attain the perfection of its beauty till Time has placed his finishing touches thereon, toning down this and tinting that, rounding off a too-sharp angle here, and making rugged a too-smooth corner there, adorning the walls with ivy and clinging creepers, and decorating the roof with lustrous lichen!

Baldock had such a genuine air of antiquity about it, with its ancient architecture and slumberous calm, so foreign to the present age, that we felt that without any undue strain upon the imagination we could picture ourselves as medieval travellers

[Sidenote: _QUAINT ALMS-HOUSES_]

arriving in a medieval market-town! Baldock does not suggest, as so many country towns unfortunately do, a bit of suburban London uprooted and dumped down in a distant shire. No, Baldock has somehow managed to retain its own characteristic individuality, and it pleases the lover of the picturesque past because of this. To the left of the broad roadway our eyes were charmed by the sight of a quaint group of ancient alms-houses, situated within a walled enclosure, through which wall a graceful archway gave entrance to the homes. Whilst we were admiring this pleasing specimen of old-time work, one of the inmates came out and invited us inside; but the interior, upon inspection, did not attract us as the exterior had done: the latter had not been spoilt by furniture or paper, or any other modern addition, to disturb its charming and restful harmony. The rooms looked comfortable enough, however, and the old body who showed us over declared that she was more than satisfied with her quarters,--even life in an alms-house could not affect her manifestly cheerful and contented disposition. A prince in a palace could not have looked more satisfied with his lot. Inscribed on a stone tablet let into the front of the building we read:

Theis Almes Howses are
the gieft of Mr Iohn Wynne
cittezen of London Latelye
Deceased who hath left a
Yeareley stipend to everey
poore of either howses to
the Worldes End. September
Anno Domini 1621.

And may the stipend be regularly paid to the poor “to the Worldes End,” according to the donor’s directions, and not be devoted to other and very different purposes, as sometimes has been the case elsewhere with similar gifts, under the specious pretext of changed times!

Judging from the date affixed to these alms-houses, they were standing just as they are now, looking doubtless a little newer, when Charles I. passed a prisoner through here in the charge of General Fairfax; on which occasion, according to long-cherished local tradition, the vicar offered him for his refreshment some wine in the Communion cup. That must have been an eventful day for Baldock.

Not only the alms-houses, but the other buildings round about, of red brick, with the pearly-gray bloom of age over them, were very pleasant to look upon. Perhaps their colour never was so crude and assertive as that of the modern red brick with which we construct our cheap misnamed Queen Anne villas--which have nothing of the Queen Anne about them,--a red that stares at you, and is of one uniform, inartistic hue--a hue quite on a par as regards unsightliness with the chilly, eye-displeasing blue of Welsh slates. Since the railways have come and cheapened communication, Welsh slates have spread over all the land like an ugly curse; you find them everywhere--they have displaced the cheerful ruddy tiles that so well suit the gentle gloom of the English climate and the soft green of its landscapes, they have ousted the pleasant gray stone slab and homely

[Sidenote: _THE MAGIC OF FAME_]

thatch. Welsh slates are bad enough, but, alas! there is even a lower depth of ugliness. Corrugated iron is still more hideous, and this I sadly note is coming into use as a roofing material; it is cheap and effectual, absolutely waterproof--and such an eyesore! How is it that things are so seldom cheap and beautiful--truly there are exceptions, but these only prove the rule--are these two qualities sworn enemies? If only the Welsh slates were of the delicious greeny-gray tint of the more expensive Cumberland ones, it would be a different matter. It is an astonishing thing how even good architects are neglectful of colour in their buildings, and what comparatively small thought they devote to the beauty of the roof.

Many people possibly would see nothing to admire or commend in Baldock; it would probably impress the average individual as being a sleepy, old-fashioned sort of place, deadly dull, and wholly devoid of interest; so doubtless the same individual would consider Stratford-on-Avon, had not Shakespeare been born there, and had not that magic accident of his birth caused the town to be visited and written about by famous authors, its beauties sought out and belauded by guide-book compilers, its quaint old-world bits of architecture to be sketched and painted and photographed endlessly, so that we all know how to admire it. Now, so far as I am aware, no very notable person has been born at Baldock, so the tourist comes not thither; and with nothing eventful to chronicle about the town, nothing to commend it but its quiet naturalness and picturesqueness, which it shares with many another ancient English market-town, Baldock will have to sleep on unfamed, for its quiet charms are not of the nature to assert themselves or appeal to everybody. There is a beauty that requires searching after, which, not being pronounced, the eye needs training to see. Still, I think that even the most unobservant traveller, on passing through the quiet little town, must note its pleasing look of mellowness and naturalness, the latter of which qualities is attractively refreshing in this age of artificiality.

Out of Baldock our road rose gradually on an embankment, possibly one of the later improvements made by the old Turnpike Trust, when there was actually a feeling amongst the coach proprietors that they might successfully compete with the coming iron horse--an idea that took some time to dispel, for even as late as October 1837 I find, from an old coaching poster so dated, that the “Red Rover” from London to Manchester was re-established as a commercial speculation. How long this “well-appointed coach” ran after its establishment I cannot say.

From the top of the rise we obtained a good view of Baldock, that, with the woods around, the silvery sheen of water below, and the soft sky above, made a very pretty picture; so pretty, indeed, that the temptation to sketch it was not to be resisted. But later on we had to harden our hearts and pass by many a picturesque spot without using our pencil, otherwise we should have made more sketches than

[Sidenote: _OLD CUSTOMS_]

miles per hour, and our journey would not have been finished by Christmas time. To the artist eye, accustomed to look out for beauty, rural England is one succession of pictures!

We now struck upon a purely farming country, where the fields were large and divided by hedgerows into a sort of glorified and many-tinted chessboard--not a happy comparison certainly, but “‘twill serve.” In some of the fields we saw gleaners, women and children, at work amongst the stubble,--I had nearly written at play, so unlike work did their occupation seem, for the children were romping, and the women were laughing and chatting, and it did our hearts good to hear the merry prattle and cheerful voices. Would all labour were as lightsome!

We had an idea that the gleaner, like the almost forgotten flail, was a thing of the past, but were delighted to find that the good old custom, honoured by over two thousand years of observance, sung of by poets and beloved by painters, has not wholly disappeared, and that some of the romance of the fields is left to us. The flail, that used to knock out the corn on the old barn floors with much thumping, I have not met with for years long past, but I believe, from what I hear, that it still is used in a few remote places. The reaping machine has driven the slow sickle into a few odd corners of the land, where the ground is rough and the crops are small, though sometimes it has momentarily reappeared elsewhere when the corn has been badly laid. The mowing machine also has to a great extent, though less universally, taken the place of the scythe. And with these changes has come a change over the sounds of the countryside. For the occasional whetting of the scythe we have the continuous rattle of the machine; and the puffing and peculiar humming of the steam-thresher, heard from afar, has taken the place of the muffled thumping of the flail on the soft straw, only to be heard a short way off.

The fact cannot be blinked that husbandry has lost not a little of its past-time picturesque and poetic aspect. Perhaps no one realises this more than the artist; for though it may be done, and has been done, yet for all it is not easy to put romance into commonplace machinery--that means poetry without the gathered glamour of the associations of long years. Machinery has at last but too successfully invaded the farm, and the agriculturist is being slowly converted into a sort of produce manufacturer. Now it is difficult to grow sentimental over machinery! The time may even come when the readers of Crabbe, Gray, Thomson, and other poets of the countryside will need the aid of a commentator to understand their terms aright. Only the other day a literary man asked me to describe a flail, as he was not quite sure what it was! Possibly some of us hardly realise how rapidly “the old order gives place to the new,” till unexpectedly the fact is brought to mind by some such question. I am thankful to say that I have heard nothing of the “Silo” of late, so that I trust that ensilage, that was to do such great things for the English farmers, is a

[Sidenote: _THE POETRY OF TOIL_]

failure, and never likely to usurp the place of the pleasant hay-field and fragrant haystacks. We simply cannot afford to improve the merry haymaking away--it is the very poetry of toil.

Driving on, we presently passed the fortieth milestone from London, just beyond which a post by the roadside informed us that we had entered Bedfordshire. Crossing this imaginary line brought back to mind a story we had been told concerning it by an antiquarian friend, as follows:--Just upon the boundaries of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire formerly stood a rambling old farm-house; the living-room of this was long and low, and on the centre beam that went across the ceiling (such as may still be found in ancient buildings) was inscribed this legend: “If you are cold, go to Hertfordshire”--which apparently inhospitable invitation was explained by the fact of the peculiar situation of the room, one-half being in the one county and one-half in the other, and it chanced that the fireplace was at the Hertfordshire end!

Soon after the change of counties, at the foot of a long gradual descent, we found ourselves in the hamlet of Astwick, where by the wayside we espied a primitive but picturesque little inn boasting the title of “The Greyhound,” with a pump and horse-trough at one side, as frequently represented in old pictures and prints of ancient hostelries--a trough of the kind in which Mr. Weller the elder so ignominiously doused the head of the unfortunate Mr. Stiggins. Besides the trough there was a tiny garden of colourful flowers in front of the inn by way of refinement, and above the weather-tinted roof uprose a fine stack of clustering chimneys. The chance light and shade effect of the moment suited well the unpretending but pleasant bit of old-time architecture, so we proceeded to photograph it, not, however, before the landlord had divined our intention, and had placed himself in a prominent position, so that he might be included in the picture. A worthy man the landlord proved to be, as we found out in after conversation with him, and we promised to send him a copy of the photograph; but “the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’” amateur photographers “gang aft agley,” for it happened we had forgotten to change the plate, and so took the old inn right on the top of a previous photograph of another inn, and the photographic mixture was not favourable to clearness or an artistic result! The negative when developed showed two signboards on separate posts in different positions and at different angles, two roofs, one just over the other, a hopeless jumble of windows, and two stacks of chimneys occupying, the same place at the same time, in spite of the well-known axiom that no two things can do so. The Astwick landlord truly was there, but converted into a veritable ghost, for through his body you could plainly trace the doorway of the first inn! Certainly the result amused sundry of our friends, but then the photograph--photographs, I mean,--were not taken for that purpose, and friends are so easily amused at one’s failings! This reminds me that a famous artist once told me, speaking of experiments in painting, that he preferred a magnificent failure to a poor success; but our failure was not magnificent.

[Sidenote: _“HEART OF OAK”_]

Having, as we fondly imagined, secured a fine photograph, we entered into a conversation with the landlord, which resulted, as we hoped, in his inviting us to “take a glance” inside, where he pointed out the floors to us, which he said were all of “heart of oak,” and further remarked, “You don’t find that in modern buildings of this sort”--a statement in which we heartily concurred. He also showed us the staircase, likewise of oak. He had not been in the house long, we learnt, and when he bought the place “it was all going to ruin”; but he put it in good order. “Lots of people come to sketch and photograph the old inn, and some of the people who come patronise us for refreshment.” So it would seem that, after all, the picturesque has a commercial value--a fact we were delighted to note. Who would go even a mile to sketch a modern-built public-house? for the primitive inn was really that, though its picturesque and thought-out design suggested a more dignified purpose.