by A G Street
Later on in the evening the crowd would be packed shoulder to shoulder, there would be confetti in profusion, and some horse-play amongst the younger labourers. But even in the midst of all this riot you would find the older men talking about their work. Wedged by the side of a shooting gallery, one shepherd would say to another: ‘Our swedes be good t’year, and we’m got plenty o’ hay, so we shall do all right thease winter, I ’low. How be you fitted fer grub thease season?’ ‘Oh, ’low we shall manage. Wonder where my missus be? I do want to get whoam. We be shiftin’ flock tomorrow.’
Women and boys might enjoy this yearly revel, but the older men’s interest was in the land and its needs.
A General Election was another occasion which obtained a half-day’s holiday for the men. They voted at a village schoolroom about three miles away, and used to journey to the poll in a two-horse wagon. My father would not allow any of the political parties to take them, and insisted on the team of horses being decorated with red ribbons, the Liberal colours, on one side, and blue ones, the Conservative hue, on the other. ‘And we do get booed gwaine up and comin’ back,’ one of the men once said to me.
Generally speaking, the men were Liberals and the farmers Conservatives. I think that agricultural labourers will be Free Traders for a good many generations to come, for even to-day the older men can remember the poverty and shortage of food during the last protectionist epoch. Old Dick Turpin, who came from a family of shepherds, told me once that in his childhood he was fed on barley bannocks, and that a small piece of bacon once a week was the only meat which came into his home apart from a poached rabbit or a dead sheep. His father was allowed so much coarse barley meal each month to feed the sheep dogs. His mother used to sift this through a piece of muslin, use the fine sample for the children, and the coarse for the dogs. The cry ‘Your food will cost you more’ will influence rural elections until that memory has died away.
My father was a Liberal, chiefly from conviction, but partly, I always thought, from the joy he got in being different from his neighbours. His landlord’s family was of the true blue Tory type, but their relations with him were of the most friendly and courteous nature. Full-blooded opposition they enjoyed and respected, but the weight of their influence and power at election time was felt by a good many people in the neighbourhood. Generally speaking, apart from the labourers, the politics of the ruling landed house were the politics of everybody else. Sometimes it happened that the politics of the ruling house changed with the death of an old landlord, the inheritance of the estate going to a man of different political views. I know one district where the new man changed from Liberal to Conservative and the whole district went to bed one night strong Liberals, to wake up next morning and discover that they were Conservatives, or had better be.
The letting of farms in those days was a personal, friendly thing, not solely a business proposition as it must be to-day. All sorts of considerations came into the choice of a tenant in addition to his farming capabilities. Some estates insisted on a prospective tenant being a Conservative and a Churchman, and of bringing definite evidence as to this. A guaranteed sufficiency of capital was required; one couldn’t have one’s tenants going wrong financially, as people would think you were charging them too much in rent. Non-interference and help with the landlord’s sport was another deciding factor. With a hunting landlord an absence of wire was more important than good farming. With a shooting landlord growing a plentiful supply of root crops as cover for his partridges, and training one’s men to report all nests of eggs to the keeper of the beat, and to abstain from poaching, was another desirable qualification.
And usually the landlord played fair. If a tenant did all he could to further his landlord’s sport, he found it easy to get repairs and improvements, and, in addition, he got a goodly share of his landlord’s sport. Apart from a few large house parties our landlord made it a practice to invite the tenants, whose farms were to be shot over, to join the party on the particular day. Looking back on those days, it seems to me that the shooting was more important than the farming. But each was necessary to the other. It was a case of live and let live, and of working in harmony together.
But for a large farmer to be an avowed Liberal was a black sin generally, although my father got away with it successfully. A portion of the old feudal system still remained, and for a tenant farmer to do anything against his landlord’s wish was unthinkable in rural circles. At one election I can remember a neighbouring farmer in the heat of political argument saying to my father, ‘I can’t make you out, Mr. Blanchard. You hunt, you shoot, you’re a sportsman, and yet you vote Liberal, and rent a farm from the Duke of ——.’
‘Well, what’s my voting got to do with my landlord?’
‘Do? Why, you ought to support your landlord. Where would —— be’, naming my father’s village, ‘without the Duke of ——?’
‘Why, where ’tis now,’ my father replied.
‘No, ’twouldn’t,’ shouted the other. ‘’Tud be in hell, where all you Liberals ought to be.’
This was the time of the Lloyd George Budget elections when feeling ran high, and there were sometimes some ugly scenes at the declaration of the poll—usually, I must confess, when the Liberal got in.
In those days any land, even small pieces, which came into the market, was usually purchased by the owners of large estates, in order to prevent interference with their shooting, and I think that one of the reasons for my father’s Liberal opinions was that he had a hankering to farm his own land, thus being beholden to nobody, although I have heard him say that to rent under a good Tory landlord was the next best thing. He was always inspecting farms which came into the market, but as these were few and far between in those days, and any farm he might purchase had to compare favourably with his present renting conditions, he never found one to suit him.
My mother came into this argument, too. Our farm was situated only three miles from a large market town, and had a large and convenient house. These were the days when the motor car was in its infancy, and my mother refused to be stranded on some farm perhaps twelve miles from a town, no matter how cheap it might be. Once my father found a real bargain so situated, and tried to persuade my mother to let him buy it. ‘It’s dirt cheap, Mam. If I farm it well for four years it’ll be worth double the money.’
‘It’s out of the world,’ said mother. ‘Besides, we don’t want it. We’re very comfortable here.’
He tried to bribe her to go there with the offer of a motor car and a chauffeur to take her to town when she liked. That proved unsuccessful for my mother was too well versed in farming enconomics to be caught like that. ‘Motor car and chauffeur,’ she snorted. ‘And when I wanted him he’d be at the other end of the farm doing some job for you. Catch you keeping a man lolling about the buildings all day, in case I wanted him.’
As a last resort he tried the high-handed method on the lines that women were all very well in their way, but could not possibly understand real business. ‘I shall buy it, Mam,’ he said one day. ‘It’s too good a chance to be missed.’
‘Well, you buy it, if you want to, but I shan’t go there with you, and that’s that.’
I have always wished that he had said that he would go there alone, as I should have liked to see how my mother would have handled that situation; but he knew better, and bowed to the mightier force. Subsequent events proved that he was right in every detail in his estimate of the bargain, and I know that he always regretted not buying that farm. But that was very definitely that.
Another time he became enamoured of a farm some forty miles away, in another county, and as my mother was a great churchwoman, he thought he would get her consent to buy it, as the freehold of this particular farm carried with it the gift of the living in the village. ‘Think, Mam. You’ll be able to choose your own parson, and you can see the church from the dining-room windows.’
‘I’ve got enough to see to without bothering with parsons,’ my mother rep
lied, ‘and I’m too old to go into a new district away from all our friends. You’re like a troubled sea, never still.’
And again, that was definitely that.
He never did buy a farm, but I have often wondered what he would have done had he lived to see the major portion of the farms in his district up for sale.
In the foregoing part of this book I have tried to give a true impression of the prosperous and secure lives of tenant farmers some twenty-five years ago, and before leaving this period, I would again point out that although they had plenty of sport and pleasure, it was all connected with their calling. It was possible in the winter for a large farmer (and most farms in the sheep districts were of necessity of at least four hundred acres) to hunt two days a week, shoot two days, go to market one day, and possibly to earmark the remaining weekday as pay day, which would necessitate driving to town to cash a cheque.
Mind you, on all these days he would make the round of his farm in the early morning, and during the pursuit of these various sports, he would be riding or walking over farms in the district, or talking to people who had an intimate connection with agricultural matters.
It was much the same in the summer time, when tennis parties were happening nearly every day. One played tennis hard; there was always joy in competing with one’s neighbours. But in between sets one talked farming, and often slipped away with one’s host to inspect his mangolds or his stock.
Rarely did a farmer sleep away from his farm. ‘An hour in the morning’s worth two at night,’ was the ruling motto. In the morning you set your men, of whom you had a plenteous sufficiency, to suitable jobs in accordance with weather conditions, and you could get off for the remainder of the day pretty frequently. A farmer’s life may have been ruled by the seasons of the year, but it was not ruled by the clock like a city dweller’s. There were no hard and fast hours. At certain seasons one worked eighteen hours a day, and at others one worked according to one’s own estimate of the necessity.
For a townsman to have enjoyed the pleasures which came almost automatically to a farmer, would have been very expensive, but in the farmer’s case they entailed scarcely any cash outlay. For instance, a horse to ride and drive with a man to look after it was part of the general expenses of the farm. The groom would do a lot of essential farm work in addition to tending the horses which themselves were used only partially for pleasure.
A farmer’s subscription to the local hunt was the permission to ride over his farm. Shooting entailed only the cash outlay for cartridges, and judicious half-crowns as tips to keepers and beaters. These last were a sound business investment from a farming point of view. When properly given and received, the recipients never omitted to do all sorts of helping things for the farmer. Gates left open by picnickers would be closed. A keeper would walk two miles maybe to give information about any stock requiring attention at the top part of the farm on his beat. The village poacher, who might be making a nocturnal raid on your rabbits, would spare no pains to put anything right for you on his travels, a horse or cow in a ditch or a sheep on its back. This sort of thing was a feature of rural life, which could not have been carried on satisfactorily without it.
The large tenant farmer’s social position was peculiar. Definitely he was not ‘County’. There was a distinct line drawn between the owners of land, and those who rented it. But the ‘County’ met him as an equal over rural sport. In his own opinion the farmer was very superior to anyone in trade, I mean, the retail trade necessitating the trader keeping a shop, and, horror of horrors, serving behind its counter. To clean out a manure yard was a gentlemanly occupation by comparison. This is dying hard. You will still find in country districts tennis clubs and other societies which refuse membership to anyone who may be discovered during the week serving behind a shop counter, whilst farmers are accepted gladly.
Consequently the ruling house of the district gave three balls every season: one for their own friends, solely a ‘County’ affair, a tenants’ ball, and a servants’ ball, which last embraced the despised shopkeeper.
There were, of course, some unfortunate folk who did not fit into either of these balls, and some of them had the privilege or suffered the indignity of being invited to the last two.
Truly, the drawing of the various ‘boundary’ lines was a real and lively problem in rural circles.
CHAPTER VII
I have been told that it is useless for a farmer to try to write a book, as he is almost sure to leave out the things which are most interesting to the general reader, deeming things which are commonplace to himself as unworthy of mention. Another danger is that his book will develop into a sort of textbook on agriculture. I do not think that I can here be accused of the latter charge, and I will in this chapter try to recall some odds and ends of happenings which may justify insertion.
The song of the Fourth Wiltshire Regiment is still ‘The vly be on the turmut’, which extols the delights of hoeing as an occupation. I am afraid I do not agree at all. I have done some hoeing, and it cured me of any desire to sing about it. Pursuing his policy of making me do every job on the farm at some time or other, my father suggested one summer that I should hoe a rudge of swedes and kale. Not, mark you, that I should hoe it in the ordinary working hours. Oh, no! This was to be a job for after tea, and I was to be paid at the same rate per acre as the men. It needs no effort of memory to recall that price. It was six shillings and sixpence per acre for flat hoeing and seconding, and seven shillings per acre for singling, or as the men put it, a pound for three times.
The usual practice was to take in to forty-two drills, which meant about a chain wide, and as this particular field was twelve chains across, my piece came to just over the acre.
As the men said, I was too long in the back (I am well over six feet) and I suffered accordingly. First we flat-hoed between the rows, cutting as close as possible to them. The prevailing weed was called stoneweed. I do not know whether that is its correct name, but it will serve. It appeared to be constructed of chilled steel wire. Evening after evening in July I beat and hacked at it, feeling very hurt in my pride that men of sixty were hoeing close by at double my speed, and making a better job. I had always found that once seasoned to a job, I could hold my own with any of the men, but at hoeing I confess my inferiority. I was then, and am now, a bad hoer.
Flat hoeing finished, we turned round, and singled the plants about fifteen inches apart. This looks a horrible mess just after you’ve done it, but next day all the plants you have left have their heads up to the sun, and look splendid, whilst the other nine-tenths you have cut out soon wither away. What a sigh of relief I gave on the evening that I finished singling my piece. I had just learnt to throw a fly, and wanted to take my rod up to the meadows in the evenings as often as possible before harvest. How light and flimsy it seemed, too, next evening, compared to the hoe.
But it wasn’t finished with my hoeing. About ten days after singling, the order was given that the field must be seconded. This meant hoeing all the ground, both between the rows and between the plants, and singling out any double plants which had been left the first time. To this day I stick to it that the field did not need this extra hoeing. It was as clear of weeds as a front flower bed. But the harvest wasn’t quite ready, and I am sure that my father and the foreman hatched this plot for my especial benefit. Anyway, we seconded the field, whether it needed it or not, and I have fought shy of hoeing ever since. Also, I confess that in my future dealings with hoers I have always paid on the generous side.
Some people say that successful men are lucky. It often seems so, but I think that they have a special genius, a flair if you like, for doing the right thing, which cannot be defined exactly. I know that my father had this gift in a marked degree. It was our general custom to break in a cart colt or two each season. I had watched this proceeding several times as a boy, and it had always happened all right. Shortly after I left school, we took a colt out one morning to break it. When I say we, there were
the foreman, and three carters in charge of the business; I was there for education, and the ‘organizer’ was absent.
In this particular case it didn’t happen according to plan. With much ‘woaing’ and many ‘stand still, oots’, the colt was hitched to a plough alongside an old steady mare. The carter took hold of the plough handles and away they started, or should have started, with a few plunges from the youngster. But that youngster refused to budge. The old mare went away on the word of command, but the colt stood fast. They coaxed him with ‘Now then, little feller’ and other endearments, to no purpose. They whacked him, they swore at him, they made horrible, sudden, weird noises and catcalls in his rear, but there he stood, hunched in sullen immobility. The old mare would look round at him with an inquiring eye as if to say: ‘Come on, I can’t stay here all day.’ Gradually the men lost their tempers and became more cruel in their methods of persuasion, but it was no good. ‘Scoatin’ little bastard,’ said one of the carters. ‘’Ee do beat all. Blast ye. Now then, coom up, Vi’let, altogether.’ Vi’let came up nobly, but the colt was not included in the altogether. He evidently disapproved of team work. He was as the cat who walked by himself, save that he didn’t walk, but stood by himself. Verily, all places were alike to him, for he showed no desire to go anywhere. Finally, the breaking was abandoned. ‘I doan’t like giein’ up,’ said the foreman, ‘but I bain’t goin’ to have ’ee beat no more. Dang un. You can do anything wi’ ’em if only they’ll goo, but when they wunt goo at all, you be done like. The Guvnor’ll create about this, though.’ The horses were unhitched, and, just as the disconsolate procession was leaving the field, my father appeared. ‘What are you coming away for?’ he asked the carter who was leading the colt. ‘’Ee wunt goo, zur, nowhow.’