Old Country Life

The minuet was, no doubt, a tedious and over-formal dance; it was only tolerable when those engaged wore hoops and powder and knee-breeches; but the English country dance is not stiff at all, and only so far formal as all complications of figures must be formal. It is at the same time infinitely elastic, for it allows of expansion or contraction by the addition or subtraction of figures. There are about a hundred figures in all, and these can be changed in place like the pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope.

Why, in this age of revivals, when we fill our rooms with Chippendale furniture and rococo mirrors and inlaid Florentine cabinets, and use the subdued colours of our grandmothers, when our books are printed in old type with head and tail pieces of two centuries ago, when the edges are left in the rough – why should we allow the waltz, the foreign waltz, to monopolize our ball-rooms to the exclusion of all beautiful figure-dancing, and let an old English art disappear completely without an attempt to recover it? It will be in these delightful, graceful, old national dances that our girls will, like the daughter of Philipater in the Spectator, dance themselves into our esteem, as it is pretty sure that in the approved fashion of waltzing they will dance themselves out of it.

CHAPTER VIII

OLD ROADS

PRACTICAL inconvenience attends living at the junction of the Is-not and the Is. To make myself better understood, I must explain.

On October 11th, 1809, Colonel Mudge published the Ordnance Survey of the county which I grace with my presence. In that map he entered a Proposed Road, running about four miles from N. to S. through my property, and in front of my house. I was not alive at the time, so the expression "my house" is inexact, it was the house of my grandfather. This proposed road was to be a main artery of traffic, and a county road, – but it was never carried out. To carry it out would have been inconvenient, as the walled garden of the house, with very good jargonelle and Bon-chrétien pears lies athwart the proposed course, and an ancient black fig-tree that produces abundantly every year grows precisely on the site of the proposed road. I presume that my grandfather raised objections. Anyhow the road was never made. However, since the survey of 1809, map-makers – convinced that what was then proposed has been in effect carried out – have systematically entered this road as an accomplished fact.

Now perhaps the reader can understand what it is to live on the point of junction of the Is and Is-not. The road indicated on the maps is not in existence, and yet the public consider, on the authority of the maps, that it is.

Then, again, I live in another way on the Is and Is-not. In 1836 a new and excellent road – now a county road – was carried at right angles to the proposed road, leading into the old high-road about a mile and a half from my house, and connecting that old high-road with the principal market town of the district, about nine miles off. Before this was constructed, the old way ran up hill and down dale in a series of scrambles, straight as an arrow; and one stretch of this road is now utterly impassable, it is simply a water-course, and a torrent rushes down it in a series of cascades over steps of slate-rock in winter, and after rain. Now – will it be believed? – just as the maps have accepted the proposed road as if it had really been made, because it was marked by Col. Mudge, so they have all ignored this main county road, because it did not exist in the days of Col. Mudge, and they persist in giving the old road, and ignoring the new one, that makes a great sweep through valleys, and indeed describes two sides of an obtuse-angled triangle, of which the old road forms the hypothenuse.

Now the reader will understand even more clearly how it is that I live on the what is, yet is not. The road is there – rates are paid to keep it up, and yet – it is not in any map, though it has been in existence for more than half a century.

Now for the practical inconvenience. One day I saw a party of men with guns walking across my grounds, in front of my house. I knew they had been poaching, and so I rushed out after them.

"What are you about? Why are you trespassing?" I roared. One of them pulled out a map and pointed. "We are going along the Queen's highway. Double black edges mark a main road. We cannot be trespassing." I was silenced.

One day I found school-boys in my walled garden eating my Bon-chrétien pears. I ordered them off, threatening them with vengeance.

"Please, sir, we did not know we were doing wrong. On the map we saw that this was a highway, and we thought we were at liberty to take anything that grows on the road." Bad maps and over-education had robbed me of my Bon-chrétien pears.

That is the disadvantage of living on or near the site of a road that is not, but which the authorities that enlighten the minds of the ignorant assert to be. My notion is, that the Press is the great instrument for the diffusion of false information among the masses. Nothing will break that conviction in me. An acquaintance was staying at the market town, and I invited him over to dinner. He hired a trap and drove himself. He had the map, he could manage, he said. He never arrived. Trusting to the map, he had gone by the old road, and had been precipitated down the cascade. The horse had fallen, the trap was smashed, and my friend's hip was dislocated.

So now every one can see that there really is great practical inconvenience in living at the junction of the Is-not yet Is, or the Is and Is-not.

I have a coachman who has been in the family for seventy-five years, and is one of the last surviving representatives of the all-but-extinct race of Caleb Balderstone. This old man remembers the state of the country before most of the new roads were made, before Macadam's system was introduced, and very curious stories he can tell of the old roads, and the travelling thereon. Formerly the roads were – not exactly paved, but made by the thrusting of big stones into holes which they more or less adequately filled. Then on top of all were put smaller stones, picked up from the fields, and not broken at all. As I have got the old road near my gates, for about a mile, closed to all but foot-passengers – though the maps persist in attempting to send carriages over it – I can see exactly what they were. This bit of road is cut between banks eight and nine feet high, has been sawn through soil and rock by the traffic of centuries, assisted by streams of water in winter. The floor is a series of rocky steps, and I can recall when these steps were eased to the traveller by the heaping of boulders on them producing a rude slope. But as with every heavy rain a rush of water went down this road, it dislodged the boulders, and woe betide the horse descending the steep declivity of loosely distributed rolling stones on an irregular and fragile stair of slates.

My great-great-grandmother had a famous black bull. The contemporary Duke of B., who was a fancier of cattle, wanted to buy it, but madam refused to sell. Again he sent over, offering double what he had offered before, but was again refused. Then said the Duke, "Tell madam, that if she will sell me that bull, I will gallop my horse down the road without saddle or bridle." She sent him the bull as a present, without exacting the ride, which would have in all likelihood cost him his life.

In old novels the sinking of the wheel of a chaise in a mud-hole, or the breakage of the carriage, is an ordinary and oft-recurring incident. The wonder to me is, that chaises ever made any progress over these old roads without being splintered to atoms. How was it that china, glass, mirrors, ever reached the country houses intact? I applied to my coachman.

"Well, sir, you see, nothing was carried in waggons then, but on packhorses, that is to say, no perishable goods. My grandfather was a packman. Those were rare times." And he showed me the old packmen's traces, across the woods where now trees grow of fifty years' standing. Indeed, alongside of many modernized roads the old packmen's courses may still be traced. There was great skill required in packing; the packhorse had crooks on its back, and the goods were hung to these crooks. The crooks were formed of two poles, about ten feet long, bent when green into the required curve, and when dried in that shape were connected by horizontal bars. A pair of crooks, thus completed, was slung over the pack-saddle, one swinging on each side, to make the balance true. The short crooks, called crubs, were slung in a similar manner. These were of stouter fabric, and formed an angle; these were used for carrying heavy materials.

I shall doubtless be excused if I quote some old verses written fifty years ago, comparing marriage to a Devonshire lane, but which will equally apply to any old road —

"In a Devonshire lane, as I trotted along
T'other day, much in want of a subject for song,
Thinks I to myself, I have hit on a strain,
Sure Marriage is much like a Devonshire lane.

In the first place 'tis long, and when once you are in it,
It holds you as fast as a cage does a linnet;
For howe'er rough and dirty the road may be found,
Drive forward you must, there is no turning round.

But though 'tis so long, it is not very wide,
For two are the most that together can ride;
And e'en then, 'tis a chance, but they get in a pother,
And jostle and cross and run foul of each other.

Oft Poverty greets them with mendicant looks,
And Care pushes by them, o'er-laden with crooks;
And Strife's grazing wheels try between them to pass,
And Stubbornness blocks up the way on her ass.

Then the banks are so high, to the left hand and right,
That they shut out the beauties around them from sight;
And hence you'll allow, 'tis an inference plain,
That Marriage is just like a Devonshire lane!

But thinks I too, these banks, within which we are pent,
With bud, blossom, and berry are richly besprent;
And the conjugal fence, which forbids us to roam,
Looks lovely when decked with the comforts of home.

In the rock's gloomy crevice the bright holly grows;
The ivy waves fresh o'er the withering rose,
And the evergreen love of a virtuous wife
Soothes the roughness of care, – cheers the winter of life.

Then long be the journey, and narrow the way,
I'll rejoice that I've seldom a turnpike to pay;
And whate'er others say, be the last to complain,
Though Marriage be just like a Devonshire lane."

"Ah, sir!" said my old coachman, "them was jolly times. The packmen used to travel in a lot together, and when they put up at an inn for the night, there was fun; – not but what they was a bit rough-like. I mind when one day they found a jackass straying, and didn't know whose it was, nor didn't ask either. They cut handfuls of rushes, and with cords they swaddled the ass up with rushes, and then set alight to him. Well, sir, that ass ran blazing like a fireball for four miles before he dropped. Them was jolly times."

"Not for asses, Caleb?"

"Certainly not for asses."

"But why did the packmen travel together, Caleb?"

"Well, sir, you see, packmen at times carried a lot o' money about with them; and it did happen now and then that lonely packmen were robbed and murdered."

"Then hardly jolly times for packmen?"

"Well, I don't know," answered Balderstone, drawing his hand and whip across his mouth. "There was packmen then, and perhaps just here and there one got murdered; but now they are all put out of the way, which is worst of all."

After a little consideration Caleb went on – "Now, I mind a curious circumstance that happened when I was a young man, just about sixty years ago. At that time there were no shops about, and once or twice in the year I was sent with a waggon and a team up to the county town (thirty-five miles off) to bring down groceries and all sorts o' things for the year. I used to start at four in the morning. One autumn morning I had started before daybreak, and I lay in the covered waggon, and the two horses they knew the road and went on. But all at once both halted, and though I cracked my whip they would not stir. I got out with the lantern, and saw that they were all of a tremble, both with their heads down looking at something, apparently, in the road. I moved the lantern about, but could see nothing in the road, and then I coaxed the horses, but they would not stir a step; then I whipped them. All at once both together gave a leap into the air, just as if they were leaping a gate, and away they dashed along the road for a mile afore I could stop them, and then they were sweating as if they had been raced in a steeplechase, and covered with foam, and trembling still. Now I was away two days, and on the third I came back, and the curious thing is – when I came back I heard that a packer had been robbed and murdered whilst I was away at that very spot, and where my horses had leaped it was over the exact place where the dead man was found lying twenty-four hours later. If they'd jumped after the murder I'd have thought nothing of it, but they jumped before the man was killed."

Road-making was formerly intrusted to the parochial authorities, and there was no supervision. It was carried out in slovenly and always in an unsystematic manner. In adopting a direct or circuitous line of way, innumerable predilections interfered, and parishes not infrequently quarrelled about the roads. The dispute between broad and narrow gauges raged long before railway lines were laid. A market town and a seaport would naturally desire to have ample verge and room enough on their highways for the transport of grain and other commodities from the interior, and for carriage of manufactured goods, or importations to the interior. On the other hand, isolated parishes would contend that driftways sufficed for their demands, and that they could house their crops, or bring their flour from the mill through the same ruts which had served their forefathers.

After the Civil Wars an impetus was given to road-making; an Act was passed authorizing a small toll to pay for the maintenance of the highways. The turnpike gate was originally a bar supported on two posts on the opposite sides of the road, and the collector sat in the open air at his seat of custom. I remember fifty years ago travelling in Germany, where at the toll-gate was a little house; one end of the bar was heavily weighted, the other fastened by a chain that led into the turnpike man's room. The toll-man thrust forth a pole with a bag at the end, into which the coin was put, he drew in the bag at his window, unhooked the chain, and the weight sent the bar flying up, the carriage passed under, and then the bar was pulled down again.