Chapter IV: Part 4

The old printers used a _y_ to represent an obsolete _th_ which was nearly of that shape, and people followed them in writing it, especially with ‘ye’ for ‘the.’ Parson Davy always did so; and his spirit, being summoned to a séance, discredited the medium by pronouncing ‘the’ as ‘ye’--a thing that no one did. We still use a _z_ as an abbreviation in ‘viz’ for ‘videlicet.’ They use it in Dutch catalogues of bulbs, and one hears gardeners talking of Narcissus Poetz or Poetaz instead of Poetarum. But it may be better to pronounce the _z_ than misinterpret it, like the people who made Barum and Sarum out of Bz and Sz, the abbreviated forms of Barnstaple and Salisbury. The _z_ was also used in ‘lez’ for ‘legitur,’ a very useful term for anyone who had to put things down in Latin, and did not know the Latin names for them. Thus, on the Court Roll of Lydford Manor, 21 September 1586, “Humfridus Pitford queritur de Johanne Thorne et Maria uxore eius de placito transgressionis super casum. Attachiantur per quinque lez callacowe et hulland bandes tres lez handkerchefs et unum lez wollen wastecott. Et quia predicti,” etc.

Among the manuscripts at the House of Lords there are some returns that have not been used sufficiently in books on local history. In May 1641 a Protestation against all Popery, etc., was taken by the Lords and Commons, and in August it was circulated in the country. At the beginning of the following year returns were required from every parish, giving the names of those who had taken the Protestation; and many of these returns are at the House of Lords. I obtained copies of the returns for this parish and seven adjoining parishes, made an index to the names, and had my index printed in 1913 for private circulation. The return for Moreton parish does not say if anyone refused to take the Protestation, but the returns for the other seven parishes say that nobody refused: so these returns give a complete list of all the male inhabitants over eighteen years of age, that being the limit of age for taking the Protestation.

There were 411 in Moreton, 53 in Lustleigh, 150 in Hennock, 345 in Bovey, 139 in North Bovey, 77 in Manaton, 179 in Ilsington and 255 in Widdicombe. None of these people had more than one Christian name, and many had the same surname. In Widdicombe there were five-and-twenty men called Hamlin or Hamlyn, and six of them were Richard, four were Thomas and three were John. In Moreton there were twenty men called Bowdon, and four of them were John, three were William and three were George. They could easily have been distinguished by saying where they lived; but in only three cases was this done. In Hennock one of the two John Potters is ‘of Kelly,’ and one of the five John Wreafords is ‘of Nepton’; and in North Bovey one of the three John Nosworthies is ‘de Kindon.’

On the Court Rolls of Wreyland Manor one John Wills is distinguished from another as ‘of Eastawray’ in 1710 and ‘de Eastawray’ in 1714. In 1718 Jane Clampitt of Yeo is called Jane Yeo; and, going a long way back, a man is twice called John atte Yeo and three times called John Yeo at the same sitting of the Court, 30 April 1438. In course of time the ‘atte’ or ‘de’ dropped out, and a man was known by the name of the place where he was living, or the place whence he had come. That explains why these returns have so many surnames that are names of places not far off, or corruptions of such names. The surname Bunckum (in Bovey) is a corruption of Boncombe or Buncombe, the parent hamlet of that home of eloquence, Bunkum, in North Carolina.

Among the Christian names there is Hanniball in Ilsington and Bovey, and Methusalem in Moreton; but most of them are commonplace. Out of these 1609 men 342 are John--that is, roughly, two men out of every nine--while 173 are William, 152 are Richard and 147 are Thomas; so that half the total number had one of these four names. It must have been confusing; and, having only one name each, they could not be distinguished by combinations of initials, as is usual now when people have two Christian names or more. Second names were not quite unknown then--there was Henry Frederick Thynne, a Royalist in the Civil War--but the new fashion had not yet extended to these rustic parishes.

These returns do not support the view that parents had a habit of naming children after the patron saint of the parish. The patron saint is Andrew at Moreton, and Pancras at Widdicombe; but Moreton has only twelve Andrews, whereas Widdicombe has eighteen Andrews and only one Pancras. Pancras is a pleasant name that parents might use oftener: it drops so nicely into Panny, like Pontius into Ponty. But parents are strange folk. Pontius is equivalent to Quintus, and I urged a friend of mine to call his fifth son Pontius; but he went and chose a less historic name. A great-great-uncle of mine gave one of his sons the name of Ghibelline, which is historic but not often given at the font. I imagine he was feeling very anti-Guelph just then.

A child named Flood was christened Noah; and in after years his house was known to everyone in Bovey as the Ark. Quite recently a Wreyland child was christened Cesca. I asked the mother where she got the name, and she said she got it off the washing. She took in washing, and one of her families had a daughter named Francesca, who was usually called ‘Cesca and had her linen marked that way. And really you cannot object to Cesca unless you also object to Betty and other shortened names.

The Protestation of 1642 was soon followed by the Civil War, and at Christmas 1645 there was a Royalist force at Bovey and a Parliamentary force at Tiverton. Fairfax marched from Tiverton to Moreton, while Cromwell marched from Tiverton to Bovey by another road, and surprised and beat the Royalists there, 9 January. They lost 12 men killed and 60 taken prisoners besides about 350 horses. “It was almost supper time with them when our men entered the town, most of them at that instant were playing at cards, but our souldiers took up the stakes for many of their principal officers, who (being together in one room) threw their stakes of mony out at the window, which whilst our souldiers were scrambling for, they escaped out at a back-door over the river, and saved their best stakes.” That is what Sprigge says in his _Anglia Rediviva or England’s Recovery_, published in 1647. The story has been doubted, as it is told of other places; but it probably is true of Bovey. Sprigge was chaplain to Fairfax during this campaign, and thus could get at facts; and the story is also in a letter to Edmund Prideaux, M.P., written on 11 January, and printed and published on 15 January by order of the House of Commons, that is, within a week of the event. The letter says that the money thrown out of window was about £10 of silver.

Next day, 10 January, “the weather still extream bitter cold,” the forces at Moreton and Bovey “had a rendezvouz near Bovey,” and went on to Ashburton, whither the Royalists had retired. That is what Sprigge says; but one wonders why the rendezvous should be ‘near’ Bovey and not at Bovey itself, Bovey being on the road to Ashburton. It would not be between Moreton and Bovey, as there is no cross-road between, and one force or the other would have to go back the way it came. If it was the other side of Bovey, the Moreton force would merely follow the Bovey force along the road, and join it later on instead of joining it at Bovey. In that weather, “much snow upon the ground,” the open country would be barred: so I imagine that Fairfax and his troops came down the valley by the usual road to Bovey, passing through the end of Wreyland Manor at Kelly.

Wreyland never was disturbed. One sitting of the Manor Court is in the first year of Edward V and the next in the first year of Richard III: another is in the second year of Richard III and the next in the first year of Henry VII. The business of the Court goes quietly on, regardless of the murders in the Tower or the carnage upon Bosworth Field. John Merdon is amerced a penny under Richard III because he has not yet repaired his buildings that are tumbling down, and he is again amerced a penny under Henry VII because he has not yet repaired, etc.

However, Bosworth Field had its effect at Wreycombe, three miles further up the valley, the Manor of Wreycombe being restored to Robert Cary, son and heir of Sir William Cary, who had forfeited it on attainder for high treason twenty years before, 1 July 1465. He had quitted England to join Queen Margaret in waging war on Edward IV, and he was killed at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. The same thing had happened to Wreycombe once before. Sir John Cary was one of the judges who were attainted of high treason for declaring the Commission of Regency to be unlawful, and he forfeited his property, 1 August 1387. He died in 1395, and next year Wreycombe and other lands were granted to his widow. She was one of the Holways of Holway, and this was Holway property that she had brought to him on marriage.

Wreyland was once the property of John de Moelis; and he died in 1337, leaving two daughters and no son. Muriel was fifteen and Isabella was thirteen or more; and they became wards of the King, as their father held his lands ‘in chief,’ that is to say, at first hand from the King. The two girls married at once--not bad matches, but without the King’s consent; and then there was the usual fuss. On partition of their father’s lands, Wreyland was part of Muriel’s share; but there was a Fine of 200 marks to pay for marrying without the King’s consent. It was paid on 27 August 1337, and the King passed on the money to his son, Edward the Black Prince, who was then a boy of seven.

Things happened here in Wreyland Manor which seem trivial now that we have only the bare facts, as set down on the record of the Manor Court; but in real life the facts may have aroused such animosities that they would seem momentous then.--John More and Thomas Sachet have been cutting down trees on the Lustleigh side of the Wrey, thereby choking the stream so that it is overflowing on the Wreyland side and doing damage here. Henry atte Slade has been catching pheasants and partridges inside the Manor bounds. (Slade is just outside.) Ralf Golde’s pigs have been eating Ralf Wilcokes’ apples from the Feast of saint Christina unto the Feast of the Nativity of the blessed Mary. (From 24 July to 8 September.) Thomas Wollecote’s pig has been eating Thomas Ollesbrome’s apples, and Ollesbrome has killed the pig, though Wollecote has offered him twenty bushels of apples as compensation. In this case two issues were set down for trial: the offer of the apples, and the killing of the pig. Wollecote failed on the first issue, and did not proceed on the second--it may be that Ollesbrome had brought the pig into Court, as his defence was that he had not killed it.

That was the Fifteenth Century, and the Twentieth is not unlike it. In this present Century there were two men living in Lustleigh parish who have now gone away--men of assured position and independent means. One man lived in a valley, and the other on a hill-side just above; and one man had a garden, and the other had a dog. When the dog got busy with bones, it went off to the garden and carried out its burials and exhumations there. At least, that is what the owner of the garden said, and what the owner of the dog denied; and the contention was so sharp between them that one of them summoned the other before the magistrates at Newton to be bound over to keep the peace.

In a humbler state of life there were two old ladies who kept chicken; and whenever one of them fed her chicken, her neighbour’s chicken came over in a mass and scrambled for the food. It was a thing that chicken would naturally do; but she felt certain that her neighbour egged them on. One day she seemed to be in heavenly happiness, and she explained to me, “I be a-thinkin’ of that woman there, when I shall see her in the torments.” I asked where she was going to see that, and she answered with asperity, “Where be I a-goin’? Why, Abram’s bosom, o’ course.” Her thoughts were on the parable of Lazarus and Dives. People of her generation did not consider eternal life worth having without eternal punishment for everybody they disliked.

In country places little things seem big, as there is nothing big to dwarf them. I have seen a man throw down his work and come rushing across the valley, uttering imprecations all the way--as someone said of him, “could hear’n comin’ up a-buzzin’ like an aireyplain”--and it was only because he saw a trespasser, not a murder or a fire or anything else commensurate. In big towns they have newspapers coming out in fresh editions all day long, and placards of the news, and boys to shout it out; and they cannot quite ignore the ‘mysteries’ and ‘allegations’ and the ‘startling revelations.’ These may be trumpery enough and quite untrue, but at all events they do not set good neighbours quarrelling.

About the time of the Armistice I was going out to Hurston one morning, and overtook a rural postman on the way. He told me that the Crown Prince had been killed; and when I said I doubted it, he said he had seen it in two newspapers, and that was good enough for him. And he announced the news at every farm-house on his round. Ten days afterwards I went out there again, and overtook him as before. I mentioned the Crown Prince, but that bit of news had passed out of his mind, and he had other news (of course, quite true) which he was taking round with him that day. News of this sort does no harm. In such places there are people who have time to think, and they can see that news is not invariably true. An old man said to me, “They tell and tell, and I don’t hearken to no word of it, only what my son says as he’s see’d hisself, and he says the Bulgarians has landed at Ostend.” I suggested Kustendje, but he stuck firmly to Ostend.

On the morning of the Armistice I went down to Bovey; and the first things I saw were two flags flying at half-mast. I felt uneasy till I got there and learned the reason why. It was a very long while since the flags had been up higher than half-mast, and now they wouldn’t go any higher until the gear was eased; and somebody would be going up to see to that a little later on. In the streets I found the children waving every flag that they could get, German or Austrian as much as French or English; and later on I saw a great display of Russian flags at Lustleigh. On asking why, I found that someone had laid in a stock of Allied flags quite early in the War; but there had been a slump in Russians, and this was the unsold remnant of the stock.

Flags generally are ugly things, crude in colour and clumsy in design, and quite unsuitable for decorations. It is a glorious thing, especially in foreign ports, to see the White Ensign on a British man-of-war. The flag means something there; but it does not mean much anywhere else, and means nothing in mere decorations with national flags and signal flags all mixed together. Ships are dressed with flags because they have the flags on board, and nothing else so handy for display; but there is no sense in copying ships in towns, and hanging flags from what are called Venetian masts. In fact the celebrated masts at Venice look rather foolish now. They meant something when they carried the banners of the three Venetian states, Cyprus, Crete, and the Morea. Now they all three carry the Italian flag, and one would be enough for that. If it is flown on more than one, it might as well be flown on ten or twelve or twenty as on three.

Instead of putting up masts and flags in towns, people might take down the advertisements, just for a day, to celebrate some great event. That might make the streets look nice. But if they really must put something up, they might as least choose something that would be less dismal than a show of flags on a wet day. They might try wreaths and flowers in enamelled iron. I have seen daffodils like that, highly recommended for back gardens in large towns, where real plants will not grow. The leaves look green and fresh all through the year, and you bring the flowers out whenever you please, as the iron stalks are hollow and fit on to long pins between the leaves.

That kind of gardening tempts me. Such plants would never run wild or wither away or die, or do any of the other annoying things that real plants often do. I also find the automatic peacock very tempting. The real bird screeches, and gets up upon thatched roofs and digs itself in. But this is a stuffed bird with clock-work in it that puts its tail up for seven minutes every quarter-hour. No doubt, the topiary peacock is more restful to the eye; but it is slow of growth and needs much careful clipping.

If box and yew are clipped into the shape of kerb-stones and stone walls, such trees may just as well be clipped into the shape of domes and pyramids and other architectural things; but not, I think, into the shape of birds and beasts that might fly off or walk away. It is only a bad joke to make a plant look like an animal, and even good jokes pall when they take twenty years to make and go on for a century. I like these things in other people’s gardens where I see them only now and then, but do not want them in my own where I should see them every day.

In the Hall House garden I established two grass walks, crossing one another at right-angles, with hedges ten feet high and four feet thick made of clipped cypress and looking as solid as walls. I not only like the look of them, but find them very convenient--in one or other of those walks I can always be out of the sun or out of the wind, if either is too strong. The cypress is Cupressus Macrocarpa, which grows very quickly here; and if anybody wants to make a hedge of it, I should advise him to keep his hedge a little narrower at the top than at the base. With a very slight slope of the sides the rain runs down to the lowest twigs; but if the sides are bolt upright, the lowest twigs dry up and wither away, leaving an ugly hollow underneath.

A formal garden may be made to look as ugly as anything in Holland when the tulips are in bloom--five hundred tulips in a bed, all at the same distance from each other, and all of the same colour and size. Enamelled iron would be better than real flowers there, as it would give the full effect at which those gardeners aim. If formality demands entire beds of flowers of one kind, these might at least be flowers of varied colour and irregular growth. I use begonias for my box-edged beds here--double, single, frilled, all mixed together, scarlet, crimson, coral, salmon, orange, yellow, white--and (in my eyes) the beds have unity enough without too much formality. But all begonias are ungainly things; and ‘a blaze of colour’ generally means a mass of flowers that have few merits of their own. There are plenty of flowers worth growing for their grandeur or their grace; but people fill their gardens up with other sorts, just as they fill their houses with the books ‘without which no gentleman’s library would be complete.’ They merely grow these plants because most people grow them.

If there is to be a ‘formal’ garden, it should be next the house, as the house itself is all right-angles and straight lines that harmonize with walls of yew or cypress and kerb-stones of box. Conversely, the ‘wild’ garden should be far away; and the usual notion is that ‘landscape’ gardening covers the transition from the ‘formal’ to the ‘wild.’ I have a notion of my own that landscape gardening is like sitting between two stools. No doubt, a landscape painter may improve a landscape by omitting things that spoil the view or putting them in where they look right; and a landscape gardener can really cut things down or root them up and plant them somewhere else. He may thereby improve a garden that was naturally wild; but when he plans a ‘landscape’ garden, he usually gives it too much formality for nature and not enough for art.

In looking at landscapes by great painters, such as Claude Lorraine, you sometimes get an uncomfortable feeling of something being wrong, and then it dawns upon you that the hills and dales and rocks and streams defy the laws of Nature. In his _Observations on Modern Gardening_, which first came out in 1770, Whately treats real landscape in the same capricious way; and the question is, how far such licence is allowable. There is an engraving of Turner’s picture of the Temeraire, with some of the mistakes corrected. The sun is still setting in the east, but the tug’s mast is forward of the funnel, not abaft of it, and the Temeraire’s foremast looks taller than her mainmast, as it really would, seen from that point of view. But these corrections spoil the composition, with its series of ascending heights from the tug’s funnel to her mast and the foremast and the mainmast of the Temeraire. Turner understood ships very well, and knew what he was doing. But the Claudes and Whatelys did not understand geology, and blundered in an aimless way.

Whately declares that every ‘landskip’ is composed of ground, wood, water, rocks and buildings. In a garden “every species of architecture may be admitted, from the Grecian down to the Chinese”; but in a wider prospect there should be “no Grecian temples, no Turkish mosques, no Egyptian obelisks or pyramids,” though there may be “the semblance of an ancient British monument,” pp. 119, 120, ed. 1770. As for its construction, “the materials might be brick, or even timber plaistered over, if stone could not easily be procured: whatever they were, the fallacy would not be discernible.” It tempts me to construct a lath-and-plaster Stonehenge here.

On one point I agree with him, p. 159, “a chearful look-out from the windows is all that the proprietor desires: he is more sensible to the charms of the greater prospects, if he sees them only occasionally, and they do not become insipid by being familiar.” Nor is it prudent to rely too much upon a distant view. In a flat country you plant a belt of trees around your house and don’t care what your neighbours do: you are monarch of all you survey. But in a hilly country, such as this, you are at your neighbours’ mercy, unless you have a very large estate. Some neighbour may quite spoil your view by starting building or cutting timber or opening a mine a mile or two away. And you cannot plant him out. If you plant a tree to hide an eyesore, it hides it only from one point of view, and from other points it hides things you may wish to see.

Clipped hedges of yew and cypress look well almost anywhere, but best near dark green trees, cedar, pine, or fir. Evergreens are always better by themselves away from trees that shed their leaves, unless such trees are masked. I think the younger Pliny was right in growing ivy on his plane trees, and letting it run out along the branches and reach across from tree to tree, _Epistolæ_, V. 6. 32. He liked the dark green of the ivy with his bay trees and his clipped box bushes below, although he knew the ivy would ultimately kill the planes.

Planes were then the fashionable trees, as they gave the pleasantest shade. They were not introduced into Italy until about 400 B.C., and were not easily grown. The elder Pliny says that there were people who watered theirs with wine, _Historia naturalis_, XII. 4 (8). I never went as far as that with any tree, nor did my grandfather, although my grandmother always made a point of watering the myrtle with cold tea. No doubt, all plants have their appropriate food. I sometimes get the parings off the hoofs when a horse is being shod, and then I give my olive trees a feed.

I respect the elder Pliny as a man--his nephew has told us how his steady snoring could be heard amidst the thunders of Vesuvius, when everybody else was scared, _Epistolæ_, VI. 16. 13--but as an author he was not at his best. His nephew has described his ways: how he gave every moment of spare time to reading books or having books read to him, always making notes and extracts as he went along, _Epistolæ_, III. 5. But he did not always take things down correctly. Theophrastos says that the plane tree was rare (spanian) in Italy, _Historia plantarum_, IV. 5. 6, and Pliny has turned this into plane trees in Italy and Spain, _Historia naturalis_, XII. 3 (7). More than half of what he says of trees is copied out of Theophrastos, but he has interspersed it with his snippets out of other authors who were not always speaking of the same varieties. And thus he has created things that never have existed and could not possibly exist. At the end of an impossible tale, _Gargantua_, I. 6, Rabelais very justly says that after all he wasn’t as big a liar as Pliny, “et toutesfoys ie ne suis poinct menteur tant asseuré comme il a esté.”

The trees which shed their leaves are gorgeous with their autumn tints, and many kinds of them are graceful in the winter with bare boughs, especially just after snow. Writing at the window where I am writing now, my grandfather notes down, 3 January 1847, “Each flake takes up its position and there remains. I hope no wind will disturb it before I can go out and take a view of the country around: which I hope to do, even if it’s up to knees.” I feel that too; but bare boughs always remind me it is winter-time, and I might easily forget that dismal fact down here, if all the trees were green. If I were making a fresh start, I would surround myself with cedar and cypress, pine and fir, holly trees and bay trees, palm trees, yucca and New Zealand flax, Portugal laurel, arbutus, camellia, rhododendron, and other such trees and shrubs. The earliest kind of rhododendron (the Nobleanum) starts flowering here at Christmas. One of mine has nearly a hundred great red trusses of bloom now--January--and the red camellias are coming out. Sometimes on winter days the thermometer goes up to 90° in the sun; and there is seldom any great extremity of cold. My grandfather notes, 11 February 1855, “Thermometer at front door now 20°, such as I never remember seeing before.”

He noted thermometer, barometer, wind and weather, every day in books he kept for that, and every week he sent a copy to my father to compare with his own notes. But my father’s notes were very irregular, as he was often away, whereas my grandfather seldom stirred, at any rate in his later years (1840 to 1870) for which I have his notes. Also, my father met with difficulties that were unknown down here. Instead of the temperature on 11 September 1850 there is a note of “My thermometer stolen from the garden wall last night,” and no more temperatures for several days.

These notes, of course, were of no use except for forecasting in future years; and my grandfather at last perceived they were of very little use at all. He writes on 10 February 1860, “These phenomena used to indicate immediate storms, but really the weather has been such of late that all my old calculations and observations are gone to the winds, so now do not pretend to rely on any of them.”

Some of his prognostications had been lamentably wrong. He writes on 23 November 1851, “My mind tells me we shall have a deal of snow this winter,” and his record of the weather shows that there was practically none. As he says that his mind told him so, I suppose he was not consciously relying on his observations or his calculations here, though he could hardly have dismissed them from his mind. I think it came of the hereditary wisdom of old countryfolk. Their observations may be less exact, but there have been many generations of observers; and thus they form opinions that come true in nine years out of ten.

Mild winters often end with falls of snow in March or April--at any rate, it is so here--and this must be the basis of the saw, “A green Christmas, a white Easter.” My Grandfather quotes it on 28 December 1857 as “an old adage--I fear it may be too true.” On 12 January 1862 he writes, “How mild it is. Well, this verifies the saying of old that if the hawthorn and holly berries are plenty, be sure of a hard winter, but if none, a mild one; and there is scarcely a berry to be seen, even on our hollies which are generally so thick. When I was young these sayings were more general than now; and it is considered that the alwise Providence is mindful of the birds as well as man.”

The birds come down here from the bleaker country round the moor as soon as wintry weather sets in, and the ground below the hollies is red with berries that the birds have dropped. But this last winter (1922, 23) was so mild that no birds came, though berries were more abundant than ever was known before. In another such winter my grandfather writes, 25 January 1846, “I cannot find any of the old men I meet can ever recollect such a mild winter, so far. I have not yet seen a winter’s bird, not a fieldfare or starling or even a whindle [redwing] nor a covey of birds of any description: neither the linnet nor finch nor yellowhammer have congregated together as heretofore: they are all about singly as in summer. They do not appear to want the food of the barn’s door, the cornricks, or stable court, so far. Hope it is all for a wise purpose.”

Of course, there sometimes are hard winters here, as in 1907, 8 when almost all the birds were killed; and he writes, 14 May 1855, “Birds of all sorts are very scarce, the winter made great havoc of them: not a thrush to be heard nor a blackbird to be seen. I have not a robin in the garden.” But winters of that kind are rare.

With this climate and rich soil there is abundant produce from the land, but very little profit--on agricultural land of mine (apart from buildings) I have been paying close upon £3 an acre in rates and tithe and taxes. During the War the Food Controller found that milk could be produced for two pence a gallon less in the four Western counties than in the rest of England; so he imposed a duty of two pence a gallon on all milk sent out of these four counties, and thereby collected about £250,000. But the Law decided that the duty was illegal; and the money is being returned.

If milk can be produced so cheaply in the West, there ought to be more dairy-farming, and more land should be laid down to permanent pasture. But that is not a popular opinion now. Some acres will produce more food if they are ploughed than if they stay in grass, and perhaps the average acre will, but some acres certainly will not; and though the produce may be more per acre, it may be less per man employed. This is forgotten, and the cry is all for ploughing up. Experienced people will not go ploughing up their pasture; but power may be given someday to a Ministry or Board or Council, which has to lay down general rules and therefore takes the average case regardless of abnormal cases, such as the rich pastures here.

According to the Food Controller’s rules, milk could be produced much cheaper on one farm than on the next adjoining farm, if the county boundary happened to come between the two; and really there were places fifty or a hundred miles inside the boundary where it could not be produced as cheaply as at places just as far outside. No doubt, the line must be drawn somewhere, if there is to be a line at all; but such lines are merely nuisances when they do not represent the facts.

There was a letter of mine on agriculture in the _Times_ of 14 June 1920, and the editor of _Justice_ thereupon sent me a leading-article in his paper of 17 June. I wrote a letter in reply, and he printed it in _Justice_ of 1 July, and afterwards printed other letters from me in reply to things that other people wrote there. These people, of course, were socialists, and one of them was organizer of the Agricultural Workers’ Union. He lamented “the want of knowledge of agriculture in the Socialistic and Labour forces”; but his own facts and figures were very often wrong, and his reasoning was not exact. I shared his aspirations for Utopia; but he was going there across the clouds, and I was going along the land.

On an average the wheat crop in England is about a ton for every acre sown, or more than double the average for the United States or Canada. But wheat is not sown here except on land that suits it; and the average would soon go down, if wheat were sown on land that is less suitable. These people seemed to think that there would always be a ton an acre, however barren the land--or several tons an acre, if ‘Science’ were invoked. And they also seemed to think that wheat alone is ‘food,’ although our forefathers ate barley, oats and rye. These can be grown on land that is not good enough for wheat; and our island might perhaps grow food enough for the whole population--as these people said it should--but the population would have to be content with something less luxurious than wheaten bread.

They also put the claims of labour very high: unreasonably high, I thought. When a labourer comes to a farm, he finds fields fenced and drained and ready for cultivation, barns and stables, carts and ploughs and every needful implement, horses and food for the horses, and manures and seeds for the land. It is surely an abuse of language to talk of the crop as the produce of his labour. Suppose the crop fails utterly, as it sometimes will, from bad weather or other causes quite beyond control. As there is no crop, there is no produce of his labour; and (logically) he ought not to get anything at all. By accepting a fixed wage, he insures against that risk.

A maximum wage for agricultural labourers was fixed by the magistrates for Devon at Quarter Sessions, 13 April 1795. They were empowered to do this by the Acts of 5 Elizabeth and 1 James I, and “having made due enquiry of the wages of the labourers in husbandry in this county, and having had respect to the price of provisions and other articles necessary for the maintenance and support of such labourers at this time,” they made an order that “all manner of men labourers in husbandry shall take, with the meat and drink accustomed to be given in each district of the county respectively, the sum of fourteen pence per day and not above.” But piece-work was excepted--“all labourers in husbandry shall take by the great or task work as they shall agree.”

In his report to the Board of Agriculture in 1807 Vancouver says that agricultural wages had not changed in Devon since 1795. He puts the daily wage at 1_s._ 2_d._ and a quart of cider for the regular hands, and 1_s._ 4_d._ and the quart for casual hands, or 8_s._ a week instead of 7_s._, as they had none of the allowances the others had--ground for pig-keeping, and corn for bread-baking, and other things, at less than market price; and he mentions that the 7_s._ could be commuted into 3_s._ 6_d._ and maintenance: pages 361 to 363 and 446. And while a man was earning his 7_s._ on the land, his wife could be earning 3_s._ 6_d._ at her spinning wheel, and there might be other spinners in the family: pages 446 and 464. But he adds that this home industry was being destroyed by factories; so that whole families had now become dependent on their earnings on the land.

Agriculture was thus called upon to pay a wage that would support men’s wives and families, just when it could not pay enough to support unmarried men. The industrial North was a necessity, but it meant destruction for the agricultural South; and many people here expressed themselves as forcibly as Cobbett, _Cottage Economy_, section 232, “The lords of the loom, the crabbed-voiced, hard-favoured, hard-hearted, puffed-up, insolent, savage and bloody wretches of the North, assisted by a blind and greedy Government, have taken all the employment away from the agricultural women and children.”

Instead of fixing a maximum wage, as in Devon, the magistrates for Berks drew up a plan, 6 May 1795, ‘the Speenhamland plan,’ which was copied by other counties but never had the force of law. (The old Roman town of Spinæ was a mile or two from Newbury, and Quarter Sessions held at Newbury were nominally held at Spinæ, then known as Speenhamland.) The plan was drawn up clumsily. It allowed too little for the wage-earner and too much for his family: he had from 3_s._ to 5_s._ a week according to the cost of living as measured by the price of corn, but he also had 1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ for his wife and each one of his children. Thus a man with a wife and seven children had twice as much as a man with a wife and two children, and five times as much as an unmarried man, though the cost of living would not be five times as much or even twice as much. That wrecked the plan: it meant paying one man a great deal more than another for getting through the same amount of work. Still, the old plan took account of facts, whereas the present notion is to fix a wage that is sufficient for an average family. This leaves big families short, and also takes money out of industry to pay unmarried men the cost of families they have not got.

In a letter to my father, 2 December 1849, my grandfather sends a message to a friend who had been talking of the good old times, and then describes the bad old times that he remembered here. “I have sold potatoes for 9_d._ per bag and hog sheep for 2_s._ 9_d._ a head. [A bag of potatoes is 160 lbs., and hogs are sheep between one and two years old.] Such was the distress among farmers then that labourers were put up to auction by the parish authorities, and hired for 6_d._ to 9_d._ per day.” Under the Speenhamland plan 6_d._ a day (3_s._ a week) was the minimum for a single man, and 9_d._ a day (4_s._ 6_d._ a week) was the minimum for a married man without a family. No doubt the 6_d._ or 9_d._ was quite as much as farmers could afford to pay when prices were so low; but men with families could not subsist on that. In their case (to use the modern terms) the economic wage was less than a subsistence wage; and the parish authorities paid them a subsistence wage and took the economic wage, the balance coming from the rates.

In agricultural districts the ratepayers were chiefly landowners, parsons with glebe and tithe, farmers, millers, and blacksmiths and others who made things for the farms; and thus the contribution from the rates came indirectly out of agriculture. It was, in fact, a general charge upon the industry, based on the employing classes’ means, but applied according to the labouring classes’ needs, so that no labourer was worse off for having a big family. No doubt it also was a subsidy to agriculture from ratepayers who were wholly unconnected with the land; but few such people could be found in country places. At the census in 1801 the parish of Lustleigh had a population of 246, and 236 of them were classed as agricultural.

Subsidies to any industry are open to abuse; but in a choice of evils this may be the lesser of the two. At present, if an economic wage is less than a subsistence wage, the industry slows down or stops, production is decreased or ceases, and hands are unemployed; and then these hands receive subsistence wages out of rates and taxes. But in a subsidy the public would only pay the difference between the economic and subsistence wages, all hands would be employed and production would go steadily on.

Since the passing of the Truck Act in 1831 payments in money have been replacing the old payments in kind. The old system was open to abuses; but I doubt if agricultural labourers have benefitted by the change, as there now are middlemen’s profits to be paid. Under the old system (as mentioned by Vancouver on pages 361, 363 of his report) farm-hands could buy their bread-corn from the farmer at fixed rates--two bushels a month of barley at 3_s._ a bushel, or a bushel of wheat at 6_s_.; and now they say the baker charges too much for their bread, whilst farmers say the miller pays too little for the wheat. So also with drink, the labourer did better with the cider he had helped to make, than with a small increase of wages for buying something else. He now buys tea or beer at prices that allow for profits and taxation, whereas his cider was taken at cost-price. No doubt, political economists would like to see all wages paid in cash, to save them trouble with statistics; but ‘real’ wages might be higher, if partly paid in produce of the farm.

A little while before the War I listened to a long dispute between two brothers, one a railway man at 30_s._ a week and the other a farm hand at 15_s._ The railway man maintained that he was worse off than his brother; he was paying 7_s._ a week for cramped accommodation in a town, whereas his brother had a cottage, free, and ground enough for growing vegetables and keeping poultry and a pig. And he went on comparing town and country prices, and town and country needs; and, on the whole, I think he proved his case. But there is an outcry against free cottages now, as a farm hand must vacate his cottage if he ceases working on the farm, the cottage being wanted for the man who takes his place. There is a great deal in a name. If these ‘tied cottages’ were called ‘official residences,’ less nonsense might be talked.

A slovenly housewife soon gives her cottage the aspect of a slum, and often gets it into such a mess that it can never be made quite nice again without almost rebuilding it; and at one time or another most of the old cottages have suffered in that way. Good housewives did their best, and scrubbed; but there was no such scrubbing here as I have seen in Holland. I stayed a night at Delft, 22 August 1872, at a hotel that looked out on a wide street with a canal running down the middle of it; and in the morning I watched the house opposite being cleaned up for the day. After all the windows had been cleaned inside and out, the front door was taken off its hinges and well scrubbed and then was carried over the canal and dipped in it.

After doing repairs, my grandfather notes, 29 October 1843, “Such is ever the case with house property: it is but a nominal income.” Matters have not improved since then; and I therefore try to build things that will never need repair. After viewing an addition that I was making at the Hall House, a village elder justly said, “There: ‘tbe everlastin’: and everlastin’: and everlastin’ after that.” It was a big granite staircase with granite walls laid in cement. I wish that former generations had used cement here: they used bad mortar with a core of rubble between the inside and outside stones--their walls were seldom less than three feet thick--and when the mortar has decayed, there is nothing to keep the outside stones from falling off and the rubble from going after them. When they were building ‘dry walls’ (that is, with neither mortar nor cement) they took more pains to get the stones to fit.

These ‘dry walls’ abound here. The countryside was strewn with granite boulders: when a piece was cleared to make a field, the boulders were broken up and used for walls enclosing it; and the walls were sometimes made immensely large, to use up the material. It is marvellous to see a skilled man building such a wall. The stones are of all shapes and sizes, from half a hundredweight to three or four, just as the rock or boulder happens to split up; and there may be many dozens of them lying about. He glances round and selects a stone, perhaps fifty feet away, and has it brought to him; and it fits in exactly with the stones he has just used, or only needs a single blow to knock off some protuberance. This all looks so easy that I have tried selecting stones myself; but they have never come right.

While I was having one of these walls built, I had a letter from a friend in London asking me if I could give a man a job: the man was strong enough for anything, but had been ill; and the doctor said he needed six weeks in the country, out of doors all day. I had him down for the six weeks, and set him to work at picking up the stones the skilled man wanted, and carrying them over to the wall. He happened to be a prizefighter, and he was still here at the time of Newton fair, and there happened to be a booth for boxing. He went in and boxed, and local men came in and boxed with him, not knowing who he was. They gained experience, and he brought home the stakes.--In his solicitude for my education, my father sent me to a prizefighter when I was twelve years old. I went twice a-week, but did not know enough to profit by his teaching--his gloves were always up against my eyes, and I saw nothing else. I did, however, learn a little of the language of the Ring.

A dozen years ago some people were talking to me here about the good old times, and their children meanwhile were giving the donkey and the dog some bits of bread. I said, “These are the good old times, and people will look back on them and say, in those days dogs and donkeys might eat wheaten bread.” I was looking ahead, a century or more, and never thought that in a few years time bread would be rationed out in England and made of other things than wheat. In what we call the good old times the labourer had no wheaten bread. In a letter of 3 December 1844 my grandfather remarks that wheat was then so cheap and oats so dear that wheat was being given to horses; and he calls wheat “food for Christians,” but then corrects himself, “when I say wheat is food for Christians, I do not mean to say the labourer is not a Christian,” although the labourer had only barley bread, not wheat.

Though wheat is so esteemed, a vast amount is wasted here in reaping and in threshing and with rats in ricks and barns. I have seen the ears gathered by hand in Turkey and in Spain, and with astonishing speed; and nothing is wasted then. And there is, I believe, an American machine which cuts the stalks so high that it reaps hardly anything below the ears; but I imagine that it does not get the ears off any of the shorter stalks.

After living in Long Island (New York) in 1817 and 1818, Cobbett says in his _Cottage Economy_, section 82, “Few people upon the face of the earth live better than the Long Islanders, yet nine families out of ten seldom eat wheaten bread. Rye is the flour that they principally make use of. Now, rye is seldom more than two-thirds the price of wheat, and barley is seldom more than half the price of wheat. Half rye and half wheat, taking out a little more of the offal, make very good bread. Half wheat, a quarter rye and a quarter barley, nay, one-third of each, make bread that I could be very well content to live upon all my lifetime.” Of course the Americans also had what they call ‘corn’ and we call ‘maize.’ We grow this for fodder, as it seldom ripens here; and we import the product as cornflour. Cobbett tried the American sort here, but found another sort near Calais--a dwarf plant--and tried this in 1827 and the following years; and in 1828 he reckoned that he had eleven thousand quartern loaves upon eleven acres, though three of the eleven had failed. These experiments of his were made at Kensington and Barnes; and in 1828 he says in _Cobbett’s Corn_, section 155, that he was paying his men three shillings a-week with board and lodging. They had porridge for breakfast: as much hot mutton as they could eat for dinner, and also apple-dumplings: bread and cheese, as much as they could eat, for supper: a pint of beer at dinner and another pint at supper. He lived on the same diet himself.

My grandfather had most of Cobbett’s agricultural books, and read them with respect, as Cobbett never recommended anything without trying it himself or having seen it tried. These books of his are shrewd and sensible, and may be right in what they say of that “degrading curse,” the “pernicious practice of drinking tea,” _Cottage Economy_, sections 23 to 33. “But is it in the power of any man, any good labourer who has attained the age of fifty, to look back upon the last thirty years of his life without cursing the day in which tea was introduced into England?” Parson Davy was preaching against tea-drinking here in 1803, and as early as 1748 Wesley was exhorting his followers to abhor tea as a deadly poison. (A prophet is without honour in his own chapels.) Cobbett likewise talks of “the corrosive, gnawing, and poisonous powers” of tea. “Tea has no useful strength in it: it contains nothing nutritious.... It is, in fact, a weaker kind of laudanum, which enlivens for the moment and deadens afterwards.”

The fault may not be in the tea itself, but in the way of making it and leaving it to ‘stand’ or ‘draw.’ A cynic said that tea was the salvation of the people here; it so damaged their digestions that they could not assimilate the food they ate; and this really was a mercy, as they over-ate themselves so much. Even in this house, I fear, tea was allowed to stand too long. I remember my grandmother being chaffed about a letter she had written, “Jane has drunk tea here. Poor soul, she has drained the cup of bitterness to the very dregs.”