by R S Surtees
Never was such an estate as Mr. Jorrocks expected he had taken possession of, for, in addition to all the tenants being described as most opulent and respectable, Mark Heavytail, the largest, who farmed what was called the “pet farm,” was stated by the rural Robins who “did” the printed particulars, to be a man of such respectability and independence of character, as to be above asking or accepting a reduction of rent. Glorious man! There was a tenant! Mark was a fine specimen of an English yeoman, six feet high, large and stout in proportion, with a great, round, nearly bald head, grey eyes, snub nose, and ample chin. His usual costume was a snuff-brown coat — at least when he sported any coat, for it was oftener on a hedge than on his back — a striped toilenette waistcoat, broad patent cords, and grey worsted stockings and thick shoes. The pet farm lying round a hillside, and the house being on the top of it, Mark had the wind first hand, and, either from that cause or from having a voice a size too large for his body, Mark always roared as if he was holloaing to a man at the mainmast of a man-of-war in a gale of wind. One of Mr. Jorrocks’s earliest visits was to the pet farm, and though he might not, like Miss Waithman, expect to find all the shepherds with pipes and crooks, or smartly clad dairymaids with cows and syllabubs under the trees, he certainly expected a different reception to what he met with from Mark. Having kicked his pursy pony up the hill, he sat mopping the perspiration from his brow, and looking down upon the village of Hillingdon, with the silvery Dart winding its tortuous course through a wide expanse of rugged picturesque country, when Mark, who was busy cutting hay in his stackyard, seeing a stranger, who he concluded was the “Squire,” put on his coat and proceeded to meet him.
“GOOD MORNIN’, SIR,” roared Mark, as soon as he got within fifty yards of Mr. Jorrocks. “STOP, LET ME OPEN THE GATE FOR YOU;” and Mr. Jorrocks, thinking Mark was deaf, pitched his voice in the same key. The following dialogue then took place, each bellowing as loud as he possibly could.
“GLAD TO SEE YE AMONG US,” roared Mark, taking off his hat as Mr. Jorrocks neared the gate.
“THANK YE, MY GOOD FRIND,” replied Mr. Jorrocks; “WERRY’APPY TO MAKE YOUR PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE.
YOU’VE A WERRY NICE FARM HERE; DOIN’ WELL, I ‘OPES.”
“WANTS A DEAL OF DOIN’ TO,” replied Mark.
“THEN VV DON’T YOU DO IT?” inquired Mr. Jorrocks.
“BECAUSE IT ARN’T MINE,” responded Mark.
“THEN WHO’S TO DO IT?” inquired Mr. Jorrocks.
“You, TO BE SURE!” replied Mark, louder than ever.
“ME!” responded Mr. Jorrocks. “MY VIG! — WHY, THEY TOLD ME THE FARM WAS PERFECTION;” adding aloud to himself, “There must be some mistake here; this can’t be the ‘pet farm.’”
“PRAY, MY GOOD MAN, VERE DOES MR.’EAVVTAIL LIVE? — MR. JORROCKS’S’EAVVTAIL, IN FACT?” inquired he, after a moment’s reflection.
“HERE,” roared Mark; “MY NAME’S HEAVVTAIL.”
“Indeed! Yell, I thought so; but some’ow your account don’t tally with the auctioneer’s description of the pet farm.”
“I KNOW NOTHIN’ ABOUT AUCTIONEERS,” roared Mark, “BUT I KNOW OUR BACK KITCHEN’ILL BE DOWN THIS BACK END IF THERE ISN’T SOMETHIN’ DONE TO HER; AND THERE’S NO KEEPIN’ THE CATTLE STRAIGHT FOR WANT OF A NEW BIER.”
“Yell, but I’m a buyer,” replied Mr. Jorrocks; “vot is it you’ve got to sell?”
“SELL I WHY, THERE’S NO PRICES TO GET FOR NOTHIN’. DOWN CORN, DOWN HORN! WE’RE ALL BEGGAR’D; NOTHIN’
FOR US BUT THE ONION (UNION); YE CAN NEVER KEEP UP YOUR RENTS.”
“My vig!” exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, adding aloud to himself, “if this is the crack tenant, I vonder wot the rest’ll be like.”
“THE VEAT’S A-LOOKIN’ WELL,” observed Mr. Jorrocks, after a pause, anxious to get Mark off the grievances — Mr. J. looking back on a field he had passed in coming up the hill.
“THAT’S BARLEY,” roared Mark. “I WISHES THE WHEAT WAS LOOKIN’ WELL. PRAY, JUST RIDE THIS WAY AND SEE IT, AND THEN SAY IF IT’S POSSIBLE AT PRESENT PRICES TO KEEP UP PRESENT RENTS.”
“Yell, but the clover’s a good crop,” observed Mr. Jorrocks, not noticing Mark’s invitation.
“The old land hasn’t a ton an acre on it. The land’s all sour — wants draining.”
“Faith, I thinks the land’s not the only sour thing on the premises,” observed Mr. Jorrocks aloud to himself.
“WILL YE BE PLEASED TO STEP THIS WAY AND LOOK AT OUR BACK KITCHEN?” bellowed Mark, after a pause; “AND REALLY I THINK THE DAIRY’LL HAVE TO BE BUILT NEW FROM THE GROUND, FOR THE WET COMES TUMBLIN’ IN BY BUCKETFULS FROM ALL QUARTERS.”
“So much the better,” roared Mr. Jorrocks; “it’ll save you the trouble of pampin’ into the milk. The Islinton folks always say the black cow is the best.”
“AY, THAT’S VARRY TRUE,” rejoined Mark, “OUR PUMP’S ALL GONE WRONG, TOO — NOT BEEN A DROP OF WATER COME
FROM HER THIS FORTNIGHT.”
“Oh dear! oh dear!” exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, “you seem to be all gone wrong together — a bundle o’ grivances. If grumblin’ makes a good farmer, you certainlie ought to be classed Ai. Good mornin’, good mornin’,” added he, turning his sluggish cob’s head downwards as he spoke, and giving it a good double-thonging as he went.
“BUT YE’LL SURELY COME AND SEE THE BACK KITCHEN!” roared Mark. “I DECLARE IT’S NEVER NO USE” —
“IT’S NEVER NO USE BOTHERIN’ ME!” screamed Mr. Jorrocks, kicking the cob and double-thonging the harder to get out of hearing, adding to himself as he went; “I’m dashed if ever I see’d sich a perfect ‘urricane of a man. Pet farm, indeed! My vig! reg’lar spoilt child, I declare! Come hup, you hugly beast,” to the cob, “come up, and get me out o’ hearin’.”
And with the word away they went down the hill, a deal faster then they came up, the whip, and the cob’s nose being turned towards home, giving an additional impetus to his movements.
CHAPTER VII.
NEIGHBOUR, YOU ARE tedious.” — SHAKESPEARE.
CRUELLY disturbed as Mr. Jorrocks had been by his interview with Mark Heavytail, he had scarcely recovered his usual equanimity before he encountered another tenant who again upset his philosophy. This was Johnny Wopstraw, a civil but very concise man; and if there is one more provoking thing than another, it is encountering a slow pragmatical matter-of-fact man when one is in a regular state of combustion. Wopstraw was a big, broad-shouldered, broadfaced, sensible, respectable man, but slow in his judgment, and cautious in his utterance. Moreover, he had a provoking way of lengthening each sentence by the unnecessary introduction of the phrase of “upon the whole,” the word whole being pronounced as if there were a couple of “h’s” and two or three “o’s” in it. He was busy in the field, but seeing the new Squire, he left his work, and introduced himself in the usual way by opening a gate.
“Thank ye, my frind,” said Mr. Jorrocks as he approached; adding, as he looked over the hedge into the next field, “You’ve a fine crop o’ barley there.”
“That’s wheat,” replied Wopstraw, taking off his hat; “upon the who-ole it’s tolerable fair. The low end isn’t so good as the high, though.”
“Humph,” grunted Mr. Jorrocks, “these corn crops rather bother my vig. And vot do you think o’ things in general?” asked he.
This was a fine comprehensive question, and just the last one that ought to have been hazarded to Wopstraw, for it was sure to last him till nightfall “Why, upon the who-ole,” he began, “things are down, and I fear they’ll keep so. Upon the who-ole, I think Sir Robert was wrong in meddlin’ with us farmers. We were doin’ pretty well upon the who-ole — just managin’ to scratch on, at least — and then he came and knocked the very wind out of our bodies. Upon the who-ole!” —
“Yell, but ‘ave you got ever a bal (bull) to sell?” interrupted Mr. Jorrocks, anxious to turn the conversation, and save himself a political lecture. “I vants a bal, o’ the pure Devonshire sort, to give th
ese foreignerin’ chaps a quiltin’. It be’oves us to be awake — wide awake I may say, sharp as Durham mustard — and to drain and dust our land with hashes and bone manure, nitrate o’ sober, and all that sort o’ stuff. The farmers here seem a long way behind the hintelligence o’ the day.”
“Why, now,” replied Wopstraw, scratching his head, and reconsidering all Mr. Jorrocks had said, so as to begin answering at the right end— “Why, now, as to a bull, I doesn’t know of one that, upon the who-ole, I can recommend. Dick Grumbleton at Hawkstone has one, but he’s of the Herefordshire sort; besides which, upon the who-ole, I don’t suppose Dick wants to part with him.” —
“Yell, never mind, then,” said Mr. Jorrocks, anxious to be off.
“As to drainin’,” continued Wopstraw, without noticing Mr. Jorrocks’s interruption, “upon the who-ole, I should say it’s the foundation of all agricultural improvement. It’s like the foundation of a house, and unless that’s sound it’s no use.”
“Then you don’t know of a bal to suit me?” rejoined Mr. Jorrocks, catching impatiently at the cob’s head, double-thonging and digging his heel into its side, riding off, and muttering something about “Tiresome chap — slow-coach — bothersome beggar,” and other little censurable epithets.
In truth, Mr. Jorrocks found a great difference between London and country people. Bred in City, where his life had been passed, and where “time is money,” the contrast between its quickness and the slowness of the country was strikingly visible. No smartness, no quickness, no question answered before asked, everything seemed to lag and drag its weary way on — to-day the same as yesterday, to-morrow as the day before. Ever-varying nature supplies the charms of artificial change, but he that cannot read that book had better remain behind the counter. Yet how many are there panting to repeat Mr. Jorrocks’s mistake!
“Hackneyed in business, wearied at that oar,
Which thousands, once fast chained to, quit no more,
But which, when life at ebb runs weak and low,
All wish, or seem to wish, they could forego;
The statesman, lawyer, merchant, man of trade,
Pants for the refuge of some rural shade.”
Mr. Jorrocks soon found he was more at home at the Shades at London Bridge or Leicester Square than in the shades of Hillingdon. It was clear he had a deal to learn. Impressed with the conviction that he was too shrewd to be cheated, and country people too honest to attempt it, he made several very moderate bargains both in the matter of cattle and corn, though the prices were so much lower than in London, that he prided himself upon being very clever, just as Englishmen think they “do” the French when they get five-and-twenty francs some odd sous for a sovereign.
Mr. Jorrocks’s jobbing and dealing brought him acquainted with another gentleman whom we will at once introduce to the reader.
Joshua Sneakington was a sort of man to be found in most places — a country mischief-maker, a kind of village lawyer — a better hand at talking than working. Tall in person, with long thinnish grey locks scattered over a finely shaped head, with a marked and expressive countenance, high forehead, grey eyes, Roman nose, slightly compressed mouth, and trimly kept whiskers and chin, there was an air of respectability about Joshua, which, aided by a low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, a well-brushed coat, and the unusual appendage of a pair of gloves, bespoke him a remove or so from the common herd. Gloves are very unusual wear in the country — the exciseman and Joshua were about the only people that sported them, except on a Sunday; and even on a Sunday they were rare — country people don’t feel at home in them. Joshua was precise and methodical in his manner, thoughtful in his looks, puritanical in his conversation, and apparently profound in his calculations. He was a native of Hillingdon, a mason by trade, and his misfortune was having been cast in so contracted a circle, for he had all the ingredients of a great rogue, and only wanted room to exercise his talents. As it was, he had cheated everybody, and set the whole parish by the ears long before he had reached the age of fifty. Joshua was in very bad odour among his own craft, for though a neat workman, and also a good judge of work, he always preferred picking holes in other people’s to doing any himself. He was plausible and subtle, and his communications were always so close and confidential that they were of little use to his employers, and only served the purpose of transferring his own delinquencies to the shoulders of other people. All this comes out in time in the country, where a bad name is a serious inconvenience to the bearer.
The appearance of a fresh fly in the spider’s web at a time it was almost deserted, was as great a godsend to Joshua as the Anti-Corn-Law League summons was to Mr. William Bowker. Not that we mean to compare Joshua to Bill in point of respectability, for Bill was immeasurably Joshua’s superior, inasmuch as he would have been honest if he could, while Joshua’s natural inclinations were for roguery and underhandedness. Bill was a fine, bold, daring, dashing sort of fellow, while the other was a mean circumventing animal, that would rather carry his points by stealth and undermining than by honesty and straightforwardness.
Knowing the advantage of early applications, as well for the purpose of securing success, as of warding off hostile admonition, Joshua very soon contrived to come in contact with Mr. Jorrocks. He knew everything Mr. J. would want, and by anticipating this, pointing out that, and recommending t’other, he soon convinced our worthy friend that he was a “monstrous clever fellow,” and might be extremely useful to him. Indeed, an honest man of this description would have been very much so, for Mr. Jorrocks, as we have already said, was superlatively ignorant of country affairs, and landed property is not quite so manageable as money in the funds. But the worst of Joshua was, he persuaded Mr. Jorrocks that all the people about him were rogues. This even he didn’t do openly. He looked grave and solemn, and shook his head, when Mr. Jorrocks talked of employing any one he didn’t approve of — hinted they were not quite the thing, that he knew some one much better suited, or that they were not first-rate workmen. Among the villagers Joshua announced himself as Mr. Jorrocks’s confidential adviser, hinted that Mr. J. would not do anything without his advice, and told them they had better make all their applications through him. Joshua jumped all at once into a great man, and paraded Mr. Jorrocks about the town just as a young lady, does a newly caught lover. Then it was, “Sneak” this, and “Sneak” that, and “You must talk to Sneak about it,” until Joshua seemed likely to eclipse even the renowned Benjamin Brady himself.
CHAPTER VIII.
WHAT! IS THE jay more precious than the lark,
Because his feathers are more beautiful?
Or is the adder better than the eel,
Because his painted skin contents the eye?”
— TAMING OF THE SHREW.
Odd as it may seem, Mrs. Jorrocks got on better at first in the country than her husband. Whether this was attributable to her earlier rural recreations at her mother’s at Tooting — who occupied one of those summaries of London felicity, a paled box containing a pond, a weeping willow, a row of laburnums and lilacs scattered about — or that she found herself of more consequence in the village “Hall” than she did in Great Coram Street, we know not; but certain it is, she took to it much more naturally than our worthy exgrocer himself, who made a very bungling piece of business of the early days of his squireship.
To be sure, Mrs. Jorrocks jumped all at once into active pursuits, furnishing and arranging her house — the like by the garden and greenhouse. She was at it all day, pulling about carpets, wheeling sofas, doing the becoming by tables and chairs, smelling and tying up geraniums, rowing the gardener, and nailing and training up rose-trees, woodbine, and ivy. Weeds too were plentiful, and Emma Flather and she always had their hands full of something. Mrs. Flather, though she could not exactly reconcile the Jorrocks’s manners and ideas with those of their predecessors, saw, nevertheless, that they were very moneyed people, and coming from London — the place in her mystified imagination of universal gentility �
� she was inclined to think the Jorrockses must be the newest fashion, and that the Westburys belonged to a somewhat antiquated day. At all events, she had no doubt the Jorrockses were a desirable acquaintance, and day after day the model of propriety was seen wending her way, watering-pot in hand, to the village Hall. —
Mrs. Flather thought it “so nice” that there was no young man in the way, so that their disinterested attentions could not be misconstrued, charging Emma all the time to find out whether there were any nephews, or who the money was likely to go to. Emma was an apt scholar, and even began clipping the Queen’s English and taking liberties with her vowels, either from contagion or for the sake of flattering her new friends. “ Imitation,” says Lacon, “is the sincerest flattery.”
Joshua Sneakington, too, set up a somewhat similar dialect, and talked to Jorrocks about ‘osses, and ‘edges, and ‘eifers (heifers), and ‘ouses, and ‘arrowing, and ‘oeing, and all sorts of ‘usbandry.
Indeed, if it hadn’t been that Joshua was rayther too keen, having laid so long out of a victim, he would have been quite an acquisition to Mr. Jorrocks at this period, for he knew all the ins and outs of the country, and where to lay hands on everything Mr. Jorrocks wanted.
The hundred or hundred and fifty acres that Mr. Jorrocks threatened taking in hand, of course, was not yet available, the tedious process of half-yearly noticing and out-going cropping having to be gone through with a greater part of it. This, perhaps, was what made Mr. Jorrocks settle less readily than his amiable and accomplished spouse.
One of the old wainscoted rooms, that we described as the parlour of the original old house, was taken by Mrs. Jorrocks for her boudoir. Not that it came up to her idea of what a boudoir ought to be, but it was conveniently situated for the kitchen; added to which, she had an eye to the other for a storeroom. Neither were its fittings-up at all to her taste, but these she thought she could rectify. She had the old richly carved stone mantelpiece painted black and yellow, in imitation of marble. The sun, the moon, and all the stars were made to accommodate themselves in the various compartments of the deeply mullioned, richly corniced ceiling, the ground of which was done cerulean blue; and the gloominess of one side of the oak-wainscoted walls she purposed relieving by all the prints out of “Jun’s” Sporting Magazines, while the other was to exhibit a triumph of industry in the shape of a papering of old postage-stamps, done in stripes of twopenny blues and penny reds. This of course was to be a work of time, the completion of which depended a good deal upon the kindness of her friends, to whom she applied most assiduously for contributions. Many of them wondered what she meant by writing to ask them to “save their old heads for her.” The Gothic oak door, with its massive wrought-iron bands and knocker, did not please her either. She had the bands and knocker taken off; invisible hinges supplied the place of the former; and a smart brass bell-pull appeared in the door-post instead of the noisy old knocker. The door itself also underwent two or three coats of paint, and shone forth in highly varnished imitation of either mahogany or rosewood: altogether, the old girl made quite a revolution. Out of doors she was equally energetic. The village school, which so long had prospered under the fostering care of the late owners of the Hall, came in for a large share of her attentions. This, however, was not conducted in accordance with her ideas of how things should be; the mop caps and russet brown stuffs of the girls did not meet her approbation, any more than did the corduroys and woollen caps of the boys meet Mr. Jorrocks’s. Mr. J. had an idea that the dress had a good deal to do with their learning, and always contended that there were no bouys half so cute as those of the red jackets and leather breeches of Islington. It was there, we believe, he got his treasure, the renowned “Binjimin” Brady.