Fresh leaves and green pastures

Contents

I. What do they know of England r II. The County ....

III. Townsfolk ....

IV. More Townsfolk, and Others V. The Oldest Inhabitant .

Chapter I What Do They Know Of England?

It was only the other day that a man turning up the ground on a bare hill-side, whereon no digging had been done since the days of the Romans, came upon what appeared to be a coffin. A square end protruded from the dip which had been hollowed out to make a tennis lawn. Some one who knew happened to be on the spot; careful investigation of the ground was made, and finally a species of lid, sides and ends were uncovered and on the bare ground lay a few tiny bones, and the skull of a grown-up person who once, before history was written down, walked over the exquisite downs around his burial-place and took his part, no doubt, manfully, in the life that surged around him. Or, indeed, it might be the skull of a woman ; albeit the length of the cofhn denoted it had held a creature above the average height. Some one who sat and watched her hero sail away to battle with her country's foes; or who may even have trembled at the fight that hurtled up and down the valley beneath her ; while on the heights she clasped her children to her, and wondered what the end of it all would be. No one knows, no one will ever know whose brain once beat in that empty bone ; no one can reconstruct the life-story of the human being who was laid to rest before the Roman legions came to Britain, and civilisation began to leave its mark on the rude people of those early days. Only just a few miles from where the coffin turned up was once a church surrounded by dwellings : now and then the ploughman's share grits on a specially stubborn stone. Curiosity causes him to dig ; he may find an exquisitely carved capital belonging once to a Norman arch ; he may find a burned flat stone that speaks to the initiated of where a house-place once stood and a hearth fire sparkled ; or again farther away across the hills he may strike even a greater find, and turn up a beautiful pavement that shows where the Roman conqueror made his home, and no doubt lived and died too, far away from his own beloved sunny Italian skies. There are those who from the skull just found, from the Norman capital, from the Roman villa, can bring before us the whole life and times when these things were part and parcel of the daily life that once meant England, to

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those who lived there at that special period and called it by the name that then was hers. Somehow or other, by careful digging, by surmise, by study, they have remade for themselves to a certain extent places and people as they were wont to be ; and if we have no certainty that such were their existence, their homes, themselves, yet we obtain glimpses into the past. Sometimes the curtain seems to lift entirely, and we realise that after all evolution has not done quite as much for humanity as the believers in that theory think, that even in some ways we have gone back, and we are not as artistic, as clever, as charming as the barbarians we have succeeded and whose lives, as far as we ourselves are personally concerned, need never have been. After all the world is round ; all is a circle ; words we cast into the air circle about, and unless caught by some Marconi receiver that may exist unseen and unknown to us, continue to circle until they reach, may be, the recording angel himself. Stones cast into the pond make circles, and it is only when they reach the edge that the circle ceases to widen out and breaks. Families live, too, in circles. Starting always from the dust, they reach their apogee and then begin the descent, ending once more in the dust from which their first known ancestor sprang. What would it have meant to us if beside the coffin and the skull we could have dug up the equivalent of a library or a daily paper, even that banal and feeble publication, the orthodox parish magazine ! After all the British Museum does not go back very far if we allude to printed matter only, and one is inclined to wonder if even these records will last, when the New Zealander spoken of by Macaulay sits on the broken bridge and surveys the blasted and shattered ruins of a city that once deemed herself mistress of the world. All the same, I do not think the New Zealander can come yet awhile, albeit folks have been heard to prophesy that the endless tunnelKng beneath ground that goes on nowadays will hasten the catastrophe. Therefore it may be as well to put down on paper — for the time for the skull and coffin cannot be long — how people used to live, breathe and move in a distant country-place more years ago than one likes quite to confess to. For already people are beginning to forget: why should they remember in these days of rush and hurry and motor-cars ? They tear through the beautiful lanes, rattle through the streets of what they call, and with some justice, their dead-alive towns and villages; and while they see the village mother rush out and angrily shake the child, who has escaped death by a bare inch, because her mere nervousness makes her sharp; and note the rather dowdily dressed girls and women and the badly arranged shopwindows ; they may thank Providence for London and the big cities, but they do not recognise 4

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how the cities have starved the country and battened on the brave lads and lasses that once were content, happy and joyful members of the life that, alas ! alas ! has for ever ceased to be. " What do they know of England that only England know?" asks the forceful poet of the latter part of the last century, but I go still farther and ask what does any one of the present generation know of England at all ? What are her wide and spacious heaths, what her everrolling hills and downs, her rippling rivers and her delicious sea-coasts, what her darhng birds and her tiny four-footed creatures ? What, oh ! what to them, are the wide silences of the moors and fields where never a reveller screams or a motor-horn toots ? Nothing, surely, save places to flee from, unless for a " week-end " or a " shooting-party." Soon, alack ! they will not even have that, for the quiet places are doomed, and where the skull turned up the other day the circle has begun to revolve once more. It is two thousand or more years since a village was built on that cliff ; now wooden houses are being put about for week-enders and life is again astir on the peaceful and soHtary hillside. Yet never again will the life I knew fifty years ago come back to the old town I knew and loved ; the houses are there, but though the houses themselves are unaltered they are lived in by the tradesfolk, good and worthy people, no doubt, much, much better read and educated than were their predecessors, but they are not " gentry," not in the least the people on whom the County called once or twice a year. Not expecting their call to be returned except perfunctorily and respectfully, but with an eye to asking the men to shoot and the women to an occasional " tea-party " on the lawn should a " Village versus Town " cricket-match be played. Or later on again the volunteer prizes to be given, or even an archery-meeting bring together two sides of the " County," one to shoot against the other, before the enraptured eyes of the townspeople and their friends.

When I had my first glimpse of this life it was in the year 1858, and oh ! how I loved my visits to the town I knew the best of all, albeit it was embittered to me by the fact that the servants would take us out at night and show us the great comet blazing away across the barn. How well I remember standing on the water butt, clutching the faithful Susan round the neck and looking at the fearful thing and pretending I did not mind ; but I did, and thankful was I for the day, and the cloudy nights when we could not see it and when it ceased to appear at all as far as we were concerned. Fifty years ago ! yet I can with one touch of the wand reconstruct the picture, albeit one has not much more than the skull and the few small bones left, as far as the human element is concerned, at any rate. 6

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Here is the house : a long, low house with a verandah, a circular drive in front of the windows, beyond that a fence, then a field, then the river and a deep red cliff where the sand-martins built and the reed- warblers' charming nests were found in the reeds by the river-bank. In the field itself grew scores and scores of mushrooms, and almost as soon as it was light the boys and I used to be off, returning home to heather-honey and new-laid eggs, and a dreadful scolding from Susan. Albeit we were soon forgiven when our stores were disclosed and an enormous stew turned up at dinner as a vast surprise for our elders and betters. The household was the typical one of the times, and as such deserves description. Only the other day I walked down the lane and seeing the old-time nursery window stirring to and fro in the wind unheeded, unnoticed, I could have wept ; the last child in that nursery is nearly fifty years of age and there has never been another one there since her day. I do not believe, look at it how one will, that the same spirit of open-handed hospitality exists now which one used to experience in the bygone days, neither do I see how such a thing could be possible. Quick transit brings distant friends even to remote spots for luncheon or tea, and takes one about even to dinners and balls ; while no one has time to stay in a place, even if there were a place to stay in, which I for one do not believe exists. But in the time I am now writing about, that housedoor stood ever open and the guest-rooms were never empty. True there were but two, but I have known four girls packed into them or even more on an occasion, while the master's room was turned into a den for a lad, particularly in the shooting season when sport was to be had on the farm and on some land the master rented, where is now a big and charming house. The mistress was the real relation, by the way ; the master was only made one by marriage ; but he was one of the most hospitable of men. He was some years older than his wife, and she was his second wife, his first wife and family having died one after the other, but he simply worshipped her and into his wide heart he took all her sisters and brothers — these latter a thankless task enough — while in later years nieces were as welcome as brothers-in-law and we always spent some of the summer there at any rate, and were made to feel as if it were as much home as any other place in the wide world. I wish I could draw the sweet and charming mistress as I remember her first. I thought her quite old ; I suppose she may have been thirty, but if so that is quite the outside, but to me she was venerable indeed. She wore her hair in curls on each side of her delightful face, and I can never recollect her saying or doing one hasty or bad-tempered action or word. I suppose her life would be thought very dull nowa- 8

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days, but she at any rate never found it so. She superintended all the domestic details of the house, and then when she had completed this work we used to go for a walk, I very impatient at the delays caused by meeting so many people she knew, or by the necessary shopping in the queer, small-paned, bow-windowed shops, where often enough we had to step down from the street into comparative darkness and were met by a mingled scent of new cheese, peppermint and dried cod, all of which smells are always connected in my mind with those very early days. Shopping in that town meant too a very great deal more than the mere ordinary buying and selling, looking at, comparing and pricing the goods. To begin with, all the week's news had to be discussed, the little happenings in the town, in the special house, and in the nurseries and school-rooms; the doctor, may be, had been seen to call, a black-edged letter was spoken of by the post-mistress as she placed it in the bag for the house. Inquiries for the absent sisters were made and indeed one was lucky if one only spent a quarter of an hour over the grocery counter, and about the same, nay, even more, in the very distasteful atmosphere of the butcher's shop. The butcher himself was then a great power, an abject tyrant, for he had no powerful rival in the shape of New Zealand meat or parcel-post ; he killed just so many " beasts " during the week and woe betide the housewife who offended him or did not give her order in due time. In either case she had to go without, lucky indeed if she could fall back on her poultry yard, for if she could not there were no tinned stores or things preserved in glasses to be had in those days, and to housekeep in the country then was indeed a fine art, or a desperate deed, according to the manner in which it was done. I was fortunate in my housekeeping days to have found favour in the eyes of the butcher, and we were great friends. Once I had an embarrassing and sudden call on my resources and I rushed up to his shop. It was a Thursday, and the place was empty, swept and garnished, save for one superb saddle of mutton which I knew somehow was being tended and watched until quite ready for the Squire's table, but I threw myself on the mercy of my good friend; I had that saddle, and I fear the one the Squire was furnished with the following week was not quite up to the usual mark. Another time I sent up and word was brought back that what I required could not be had. In the afternoon I went to the shop myself and saw the joint staring me in the face. " Oh ! you base deceiver ! " I remarked, as I paid his book ; " you have a leg of lamb after all ! " He looked puzzled. " Was it you wanted it ? " he asked. " There, I thought the message came from them 'Enries " (another branch of the family and one he could not bear) ; "of

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course you shall have it " — and I did, while my aunt was told that if a sheep had four legs mutton had only two, and that she ought to know better than order three legs of mutton in a week, for have them she certainly could not.

The manner of paying one's bills in the earliest days I recollect was also a curious and happy-go-lucky one. Many were paid in kind ; the doctors, who were partners, set their bills against the tradesmen's bills ; they had no partnership account at the bank, but whoever received the cheque or cash seized and kept it, and though there was an apparent settlement once a year, it was a mere farce. Moreover, I have known a change in the partnership held up for years because it was quite impossible to disentangle the confusion between the doctor's own accounts with the shops, and those of the medical part of the affair. The lawyers were the same ; the different tradesfolk were the same, and I fancy the only man who paid his accounts straight out in money was the parson, for the pew-rents were duly collected by the clerk, who also brought round a grimy book at Easter in which one was supposed to enter a certain sum as Easter offering for the rector, the curate and the clerk, but as I never saw this book myself I am only giving a hearsay account of it, after all.

As a child I quite well recollect we sat up in a gallery from whence I could see the parson's

II sermon and knew exactly how long it would last ; he preached from a regular " three-decker," the Sunday-school children sat on benches in the chancel, and the choir and the organ were up in a gallery at the west end, where is now a fine open arch. In later days the children were removed to the galleries and the choir to the chancel ; this latter improved vastly from their more prominent position, but the children's conduct became so infamous that a late rector did away with his galleries because he could not keep order there. I should like to have seen the faces of the old rector, clerk and churchwardens could they have heard such a statement ! Why, the boys' heads would have been rapped and the girls' too had they dared to misbehave ; and I have even seen young men and maidens at the evening service brought to book and many blushes by the churchwardens' sudden appearance in the galleries, or by a glance from the rector who had but to look in their direction to ensure utter silence at once.

But I have strayed somewhat away from a day in the life of a gentlewoman fifty years ago ! When we had gone home after the shopping there was dinner; not lunch, please recollect, but dinner; sometimes at two, sometimes at four, according to the day of the week ; then we would find the day's paper and often discover sundry cards on the marble slab in the square hall. Calls were then made between twelve and

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three, or between twelve and four, this latter on market-days and only by folks grand enough to own carriages. Will it be believed that it quite shocked the elder ladies if young and giddy creatures walked up the street on market-days ? The farmers might — and no doubt did — make personal remarks ; they might — oh ! awful idea ! — see one's ankles. As the market house stood at a corner in the square where all four streets met, this was not unlikely, more especially as the wind had a fine habit of careering up and down the streets up which, when there was not a market, a cannon-ball might have been shot, said strangers, and no one a penny the worse. I am always grieved to see the disappearance of these market-days, and nowadays I don't think any one would object on the score of the possible remarks of the farmers to walk boldly up, aye, and even do^\Ti the street on the day on which it is still supposed to be held. In the early days the little town was crowded ; then would drive in the great carriages with their two stalwart horses strong enough to breast the tremendous hills, their coachman and footmen complete ; the ladies inside, doing their shopping, calling for the afternoon letters and finally picking up the husbands who may have driven in earlier on magisterial work intent, or even to buy animals under their bailiffs' superintendence. For some of them were interested in model farming and all, to a man, dearly loved to hear and talk over the gossip of the week in the town itself. We never lived quite in the town, and so missed what I always like to see, the mere va-et-vient of any place; but we generally found a friendly window out of which to gaze on market-days even when we were quite small. The house we loved the most was a marvel, a microcosm of the last hundred years, for it was taken and lived in, quite a hundred and fifty years ago now, by the parents of those who were living there when I was a child. It stood square and solid opposite the market-house, which then was a small building with a cupola, outside of which the hustings were erected, whence speeches used to be made at election times and the poll declared ; and the furniture was almost priceless, though honestly we considered it more frightful than anything we had ever beheld, but as it was owned by the oldest inhabitant I shall describe that later on. I believe on market-days dinner there was at four, and therefore we could remain there later than at other places where it was at the earlier hour of three. If we dined at three the waggonette used to come round after dinner and we drove out solemnly for two hours ; always on the same road, unless we had calls to pay ; for the master of the establishment had compounded for the tolls on that special road, as he had farm land in that direction although he was a lawyer ; and so we had not to stand and deliver 14

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the ninepence it would otherwise have cost us every time we went out for a drive. Tolls were a nuisance, but I beg to state that they were far and away the fairest means of enforcing payment for the roads, and I think that Government would be wise who restored the toll-bars and took the chance of being cursed by the users of the roads, for the nuisance and delay they most undoubtedly were. I have myself used the roads in that district for four years and never paid anything towards a highway rate ; the motors that destroy the roads as fast as they are made pay nothing ; they pass from county to county without the smallest fee of any sort or kind. While the toll-bars would make excellent almshouses for old retainers, and they could be checked by some manner of self-registering gate which should mark the number of times it is opened and so make the old system of farming out the tolls unnecessary and impossible. Neither need the toll-bars be quite as frequent as they were ; on one road we could have paid three and, had we desired to go one way and return another, should have been obliged to do so; which would certainly have made the drive rather an expensive undertaking. After our drive came tea, a real sit-down tea, with cakes, jam, more honey and any amount of fruit in the summer, when the mistress used to garden and we played games with the boys. Sometimes I sat out in the meadow and scored for the very amateur cricket for cricketers, one of whom afterwards played for his 'varsity, or we played croquet. None of your scientific games, but the good old spiteful, hard-hitting business, when the boundaries were the shrubs and when we became so excited over the matter, that we have rubbed the balls with phosphorus, and hung lamps on the hoops, and played until nearly midnight, never recking that the dew was falling and the damp rising, and that we were becoming almost as wet as if we had been in the river.

What, after that dreadful comet and the mushroom gathering in 1858, are my first recollections ? I think the discovery of the deHcious inner garden and that strawberries and gooseberries grew out of doors and did not come into a damp and somewhat battered existence in a greengrocer's shop. What can equal the freedom of a fruit garden to a London child to whom fruit was a high privilege reserved for Sundays or when some was left over from dessert after a party? Or what marvels equal the discovery, that bought fruit cannot resemble strawberries hot with splendid sunshine, and just fit to eat on the spot; or even the humble gooseberry, red, plump, delicious and warm too in the sun, while, though our fingers and frocks suffered, no one scolded, for every one in the country took such destruction as a matter of course. Then to be allowed to gather flowers that did not blacken our hands, to even hold the tiny wooden i6

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pegs used to keep the heads of the verbenas in place in the round beds, and finally to help water the greenhouse, the warm, delicious scent from which I materialise as I write. Can Heaven give one anything dearer, sweeter, or purer than a London child's first spring and summer in the country ? I doubt it, but if it can the sooner the gates open wide and let me in the sooner I will welcome the call to go ! I say a London child advisedly, for one born in the country does not, cannot, realise all the country can mean to one born in a city; and if as one grows old one remembers how good London is both for young and old, one can but look back at the peace that irked one at the time and at the long silences that were then as death itself, and realise that, kind as the country is to the town-bird for a change, it is not liveable in as part and parcel of it, unless one is born and brought up there, and so in a measure assimilates, understands, and becomes part of it and its little ways. After all, human nature is much the same in every corner of the globe. I know, though I am not supposed to hear, that the crossing-sweeper at the corner and the neighbours round about talk of us and speculate about us in London ; but there one need not care ; in the country one must. In the country, also, one has to realise with amazement the hundred and one differences in rank, so infinitesimal that it almost takes a microscope to discover them ; which all B 17 the same are far more real than the same divisions are or can be in London, where it is impossible to know that they even exist. In London at least creed matters nothing except to oneself; in the country even now it is a social crime to be a Dissenter of any sort or kind, while any of the fads which are a species of Open Sesame nowadays in London would be regarded with open disfavour, and raise at once an impassable barrier between the owner of such fads, and the ordinary people living in the country even in these present times.

Very little interest in literature, music, or art was taken, yet politics were always of burning interest, though not as politics, merely as a question of party. " Follow my leader " was the political motto, and not a bad one, were the leader to be trusted ; and in the same way that wives were mere echoes of the men of the household, so did the men echo and uphold the opinions of the party to which they were attached. The women talked of their nurseries, their gardens* their poultry, and their neighbours, but quite in a different way from the manner in which they discuss these matters now. The children were not examined critically and scientifically ; tempers were tempers, and not nerves; heredity had not come into sight, and therefore could not be taken into consideration. Children were expected to obey, and not argue; they were kept to nursery and schoolroom; while if the i8

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girls did not expand as they do nowadays they were far more pleasant and useful, albeit they did not live and enjoy their lives in the style of to-day. If they are better women I do not know ; I do not think they are ; yet I scarcely like to say so, because I know full well that to every generation the one that is to succeed it always appears unsatisfactory; and after all, though we have different views, it does not follow that both are good or both are bad, or, indeed, that one is one thing and the other the other; they are different, so let the matter rest at that.

In this age of rush and hurry I like to close my eyes and see once more the dear old place lying half asleep in the silence and beauty of a summer afternoon. The river slips under the grey bridge as it has slipped since the days the Normans built it, and the men linger and gossip there as men may have done when the builders left off work at the castle, and looked at the exquisite sunsets behind the long, lovely range of hills. But I liked even better than that the rising and falling sloping green walls that still encompass the town; where one could see both rivers and the reach where the bigger one of the two, spreads out to the sea, and note the tiny steamer puffing home up to the wharf from its day's work among the clay-barges ; or watch the brown sail of some boat gliding down to the harbour, the owner thereof intent on fishing or shooting, according to the special time of year. In our day no one troubled especially about the place ; we knew its history ; settled this thing or that to our own satisfaction ; and the old inhabitants specially prided themselves on being bred, born, and brought up within the walls. And it is a curious revenge that I, who scoffed and sneered at the life and people, as youth always does scoff at age and slowness, have lived to pine for the peace and silence ; and the dear, good, kind folk who are gone; who have vanished for evermore from that special spot. One returns, says the proverb, always to one's first love ; as a child and a young girl I loved the place, and the people then were kindly and most hospitable. I recollect a round of mild gaieties which were joy indeed to me after the heated and stuffy rooms of London. The picnics were delightful, and more amusing than one could say, they were so different to anything I had ever experienced. It did strike me as weird that each " guest " brought his or her own contribution to the feast, but in the earliest days of all, the organiser of the party took possession of every basket, and all was in common. The shadow of the times had begun to fall when separate tablecloths were added to the baskets and each lady sat in state at the head of her own " cloth " ; outsiders were creeping in, " Johnny New-comes " arriving on the scene. It behoved the old inhabitants to