Crying for the Light: or, Fifty Years Ago. Volume 3 of 3

Crying for the Light: or, Fifty Years Ago. Volume 3 of 3
James Ritchie

Ritchie J. Ewing James Ewing

Crying for the Light; Or, Fifty Years Ago. Vol. 3 [of 3]

CHAPTER XXII.

AT THE CATTLE-SHOW

Again we are at Sloville, on the occasion of the anniversary of the flourishing Agricultural Society of the county – an occasion which fills the town with rosy-faced, ruined British farmers; which blocks up all the leading streets with flocks and herds of oxen and sheep from a thousand hills, and which not a little astonishes and vexes the soul of the true-born son of the soil, as he contemplates new-fangled machinery of every variety and for every purpose; alarms him with ominous forebodings of a time when, Othello-like, he will find his occupation gone, and the rascally steam-engine doing the work, and taking the bread out of the mouth of an honest man. He thinks of Swing and sighs. That mysterious personage had a way of putting down threshing-machines which was satisfactory for a time; but, alas! steam is king, and it is vain to fight with him. It is steam quite as much as the wickedness of the landlord, incredible as it may seem to the Radical politician, which has emptied the country and filled the town. It would be all right if steam would work off our surplus population. Alas! it does nothing of the kind, and each year the labourer finds himself of less account; nor can there be any change for the better till we get the people back on to the land, away from the crowded city with its ever-increasing drudgery and toil. Perhaps when they have settled Ireland our wise men of Gotham may look at home. There is plenty for them to do there. It is high time that we do something for our bold peasantry, once their country’s pride.

It is a fine, bright, sparkling morning, one rare in England, but to be made the most of when it comes. There are no clouds in the sky, and there is scarce a breath of air to bring them down from the vasty deep above. Every hedgerow is bright with flowers, and musical with the song of birds. Overnight there was a shower, which laid the dust and added a touch of freshness to the emerald meadows. On every side ancient oaks and wide-reaching elms cast a grateful shade. What can be dearer than an English landscape on such a day? Even the thatched clay cottage, with its roses and honeysuckle, looks picturesque, and the brown cows suggest more than milk as they lie chewing the cud, apparently at peace with themselves and all below. Here and there amidst the trees is the red-brick manor-house, or the old-fashioned farmhouse, or the gray spire of the village church, where from time immemorial the tribes have repaired. Yesterday, it were, they were teaching there the Mass; now the Mass is unsung, and we have the doctrines and Articles of the Church of England, which seem sadly at variance with one and another. To-morrow what shall we hear there? Who can say? Man and his opinions change only in our villages, the face of Nature remains the same. You travel all the world over, and you come back to your native village to find it ever the same, only a little smaller, that is all.

From the lodge of a neighbouring hall rides forth a cavalcade; Sir Watkin Strahan, well-mounted, is the leader of the party. A fair girl, the rich merchant’s daughter, is by his side; on the other is the rich merchant himself. Behind them follows a groom in livery, perhaps the best rider of the lot. As they leave the gate the keeper hands Sir Watkin an ill-written epistle on a dirty piece of paper, which Sir Watkin indignantly tears to pieces without reading. ‘If the contents are of importance,’ he says to himself, ‘they will come before him in a more legitimate manner.’

‘’Tis that old woman from the workhouse,’ says the lodge-keeper to the groom, who gives a knowing smile in reply as he passes out. ‘She’s a good deal arter the maister,’ she replies, ‘but he’s not one to take up with the likes of her. She’s a cool one, at any rate.’

They are now on the turnpike which leads to Sloville, and hence to London itself. The crowd thickens as they near the town. The tenants on the estate are numerous, and Sir Watkin has a word for them all. He inquires after their families; as to the state of their oxen and asses; what kind of a season it has been with them, and how the crops are getting on. The tenants are careful not to reply too cheerily. They are talking to their landlord, and he may put up the rent if they brag too much.

The London merchant is charmed. He has a lot more money than Sir Watkin, but it brings him no gratified courtesies either abroad or at home. He is suspicious even of his chief clerk. Everyone seems to look up to Sir Watkin. There is something in being a landowner, and the bearer of any kind of hereditary title.

‘Why,’ he asks himself, ‘does not the Queen make baronets of such as himself? Men who add to British wealth, who carry British commerce all over the world; without whom England would never have become mistress of the seas. Infinitely superior is the British merchant to the British landlord. Yet, how much we think of the one, how little of the other. Will it ever be so?’ he asks himself. Wise as he is, he fails to anticipate a time when circumstances shall break the power of the landlord, and the produce of Canada and America make the land an unsaleable commodity.

As a matter of theory nothing can be more ideally beautiful than the landed system under which England has become great and flourishing; nor was any other system possible at the time it became developed in our midst. The sovereign apportioned the land between his nobles as a reward for their devotion to his service. As they became strong, they acted as a check on the sovereign himself; as the middle class began to grow strong by commerce, they acted as a check on each, and king and noble felt their importance and their power, and were ready to attach them to their side. It is to the credit of our aristocracy that they aimed to be the leaders of the people; that they did not sink into mere courtiers; that they were bold and hardy – ready to take their share in the fighting and adventure which became the necessity of our insular position. It is more to their credit that the relation between them and their tenants was pleasant and mutually advantageous. The great landlord was a power in the land, a centre of civilization, the friend of all within his sphere of influence. His sons served the State – in the army and navy and the Church. The farmer and the labourer had much in common; they worked side by side, ate at the same table, talked the same language, and were equally ready to do the will of their superiors. In time there grew up a different state of things; with that love of money which is the root of all evil, society became revolutionized – the landlord wanted higher rents; the farmer aspired to be a gentleman, and the poor labourer was deprived of his bit of common, of his sports and pastimes; his cottage was pulled down, and he had to end his days in the workhouse or in some city slum; and now Hodge has only the beer-shop or the Primitive Methodist chapel to look to for sympathy and friendship. The man of to-day is the man who makes money, no matter how.

At the time of which I write, the old tradition in favour of the landlord was still in force, and Sir Watkin was glad to show his City friends how all did him honour as they made their way amidst the ever increasing throng on their way to the cattle-show.

And the young lady – what of her? Her bosom swells, and her eye sparkles with pride. Her only recollection of her grandfather is that of a feeble old man dressed in rusty black, dependent for his bread and cheese on his more vigorous and successful son.

Sir Watkin had a hall full of the portraits of his ancestors. Some had been great lawyers, some soldiers and sailors – all more or less connected with the State. And, then, what a monarch was a landlord in his domains, almost armed with the power of life and death! How much pleasanter the talk of such a man than of one who was in a counting-house all day, and whose favourite literature was to be found in the money articles of the Times! Should she become Lady Watkin? Certainly it would be very nice, if she could not manage to secure a lord. In default of the latter, she made herself very agreeable to her host, who was old enough to be her father, and who, if he was an Israelite, was not altogether without guile.

At length our illustrious friends reach Sloville, or rather the outskirts of the town, where the Agricultural Show is held. Here the sheep are inspected; and then they pass on to the shorthorns and Herefords; and then, very evident in more ways than one were the pigs of Berks and Hants, and other choice breeds. How they were watched by the fat farmers with sympathetic eyes! How the rustic chawbacon doted on them! We hear much of the roast beef of old England, but dearer to the national heart is its roast pork, especially when it comes to us in the shape of roast pig, immortalized by the charming Elia, and the theme – the fitting theme – of one of his most eloquent essays: ‘See him,’ he writes, ‘in the dish – his second cradle – how meek he lieth! Wouldst thou have the innocent grow up to the grossness and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation. From these sins he is happily snatched away.’

’Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care.’

The horses, as the nobler animals, had a field to themselves. It was there the multitude flocked, for every Englishman thinks he knows more of horses and can manage them better than anyone else; all were there, from the Leviathan cart-horses, such as we see in brewers’ drays, to the light-built hack on which my lady canters across the park. Here Sir Watkin, as became him, was oracular, as he went from one to the other of the candidates for the honours of the day, looked into his mouth and inspected his teeth, felt his hoofs and prodded his sides, took off his hat and beat a tattoo with his riding-whip in order to get a good idea of the animal’s performance, whilst the ostler with a straw in his mouth stood admiring. The farmers were proud, for Sir Watkin was a connoisseur, and knew a thing or two.

Next to the horses, the ladies affected the poultry. Perhaps a time will come when the British farmer will condescend to think of such small fry, and divert into his own pocket the millions we send to France and elsewhere for eggs and poultry. Sir Watkin did not care much about them – nor did the British merchant – so long as he got his fresh egg for breakfast, and his little bit of the breast with a glass of sherry for lunch; but the lady was not to be gainsaid, and so a half-hour was devoted to the noisy neighbourhood of Brahmas and Dorkings and Cochin-Chinas; while rival cocks – happily far apart – challenged each other to mortal combat, and proudly hurled defiance from the prison walls. A short distance off we the improved ploughs and tumbrels and waggons, and the reaping machines, for which we are indebted to America, and which testify how much may be done by machinery on large farms held by farmers of sufficient means. Here the spectators were of a more select class, high farming not being in everyone’s way. Instead of the rosy, stupid, sleek bucolic, you saw men learned in machinery, and with some of the smartness of the town men, bent on improvement and eager to turn science to profitable account. Wheat was threshed and dressed in the most efficient manner. The rustic farmer stared, open-mouthed, questioning whether it were safer to continue as his fathers before him or to give in to machinery which promised him such beneficent results. As it was, he seemed to be much exercised in his mind. The elder men shook their heads, the young ones seemed ready for novelty. Perhaps the truth lay between the two. Had we not of late suffered much from potato disease? said the old farmer, and did one ever hear of that before we had the railway? That was a poser, as they thought, which there was no getting over, however plausible the speech of agricultural implement maker or vendor of artificial manure.

As usual, the refreshment booths were the most patronized parts of the exhibition. There the learned and the ignorant, the old-fashioned farmer and the man of the present time, met on an equality. There was to be found the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. The townspeople understood that part of the business as well as the farmer who had come out for a spree; and in a little while the fun was fast and furious.

The outskirts of the field devoted to the exhibition assumed the aspect of a fair. Here a crowd witnessed that popular domestic drama known as Punch and Judy. There the youths of the district played madly with Aunt Sally. In one quarter champions from London demonstrated the art of self-defence; in another was Mrs. Jarley with her moral wax-works. The peasantry were in great force, as they always are when beer is to be had or anything out of the way to be seen. So dense was the crowd it was a wonder someone was not hurt, as reckless farmers, under the influence of beer, and in order to show off the prowess of their steeds, galloped up and down. Boys, of course, were always in the way. Unfortunately a special providence watched over them.

All at once Sir Watkin Strahan found that he was followed by an old woman in a workhouse garb, who had got out for a holiday, and who had evidently been indulging in liquor to an extent that embarrassed her movements and impaired her forces of speech. It was a very disagreeable situation for him. He was well known to everyone there, and, besides, he had a lady under his escort in whose eye he wished to assume a good figure. As a popular landlord and well-known county man, so far he had succeeded to his heart’s content.

The swells had deferred to his opinion; the farmers had applauded his jokes, whilst their wives and daughters beamed with smiles; and the plebeians had eyed him with reverence from afar. Representatives of leading firms had besought his attention and patronage as they explained the peculiar merits of their own machines. His own part in the show had been very successful. He had won a prize with one of his own bullocks, his sheep were classed in A 1, and his fine porkers, of the real Berkshire breed, had attracted honourable mention; but wherever he went, there was this old hag in his way, making signs to him which he could not or would not understand. All at once he was separated from his friends, and the woman, seeing her opportunity, rushed at him.

‘What the deuce do you want?’ said he angrily, holding up his riding-whip as if about to hit her.

‘I’ve got something to say to yer honour.’

‘Well, say on,’ said he impatiently.

‘But I cant say it here,’ was the reply.

‘I suppose,’ said the Baronet, ‘you want some money? There is half a crown,’ continued he, hastily tossing it her. ‘But don’t spend it in beer, my good woman; you have had too much already.’

‘No, ’tis not money. I can tell yer honour something you would like to know.’

‘Much obliged, I am sure; but I fear you are labouring under a delusion.’

‘No, no, Sir Watkin.’

‘You’re drunk, I tell you. Be off, or I’ll give you in charge.’

‘Me drunk, Sir Watkin? A poor lone widow as has lived respectable in Sloville for years, though unfortunate, but that is neither here nor there. Me drunk? No, no, Sir Watkin!’

‘But I tell you you are, my good woman.’

‘Drunk or sober, Sir Watkin, you must listen to me.’

‘I’ll do nothing of the kind.’

‘If you don’t hear me, Sir Watkin, you’ll be sorry as long as you live.’

By this time the crowd had been attracted to the spot, and the situation was becoming unpleasant to the Baronet, who formed the centre of an amazed group, to whom the annoyance of the Baronet and the tipsy gravity of the woman were more than slightly amusing.

Sir Watkin attempted to move off.

The poor woman endeavoured to stop him. In the attempt she overbalanced herself, and fell prostrate on the earth, to the intense delight of the spectators, who enjoyed the scene amazingly.

‘Sir Watkin, I say,’ said his persecutor, rising slowly from her recumbent position; ‘Sir Watkin, I say!’

But the baronet was gone, and, instead, the woman found herself being assisted gently off the ground by an efficient policeman, who, seeing a crowd of a peaceful character, thought it becoming to interfere.

Had the crowd been of a different complexion, and had there been any fighting going on, the chances are the policeman – with the usual instinct of his order for a sound skin or an uncracked skull – would have been looking steadfastly in quite an opposite direction. They all do it, and it is natural.

The man had already asked Sir Watkin if he would have her given in charge, an offer Sir Watkin declined. He had no wish, he said, to be hard on her; he only wished her to leave him alone. That was quite enough.

The crowd naturally sided with the Baronet. He was the great man of the district.

‘What business had a wretched woman like that to interfere with him? Just like her imperence!’ said the majority.

One or two, more curious than the rest, followed the woman, with a view to learn further particulars; but she was, for a wonder, reticent. She was not Sall – but Sall’s friend and ally. Not if wild horses were to drag her in twain would she disclose her secret. It was one between Sir Watkin and herself alone.

Sir Watkin rejoined his friends, trusting that they had not been eye-witnesses of his adventure.