Complete Works of R S Surtees

by R S Surtees

  “But that won’t suit the speech I’ve got by heart, Mr. Jorrocks,” replied the Marquis, in a state of perturbation at his friend supposing he could take a part at short notice.

  “Yell, but vot’s your speech about?” inquired Mr. Jorrocks; “it’ll surely be about farmin’.”

  “Oh, yes, I begin with the antiquity of the thing, showing that the greatest poets and generals and statesmen of all countries and times have encouraged agriculture.”

  “Werry good,” said Mr. Jorrocks.

  “Then I take a look at the beautiful harmless simplicity of life it engenders, contrast the robust farmer with the pallid artisan, and their beautiful and rosy offspring with the children of town-bred parents; talk of the importance of a ‘ bold peasantry’ to a country’s welfare, and finish with the advantages of improving the farmers’ condition by putting them in possession of the newest fashions, or whatever you call the things in farming, and express the great interest I take in this district, and the pleasure I experience in becoming the President of a Society of such praiseworthy people, or something of that sort,” concluded the Marquis.

  “Werry good,” said Mr. Jorrocks, “werry good indeed — capital I may say; nothin’ can be better. Folks have a wonderful likin’ for what they don’t understand, and if you finish by a little that they do understand, they’ll take all the rest for granted, and say you are a tre-men-dous clever feller! I’m a goin’ to do a bit of antiquity myself — cribbed of course, but that’s nothin’. But confound it, I’m forgetting the werry pint wot I wanted to talk to you about. Drainin’s the ticket, as I told you before. Stick that into them. Let drainin’ be the great gun of your discourse. Nothing like drainin’; say it’s the grandest diskivery wot-ever was made — that the inwentor, Smith o’ Deanston,’s the greatest benefactor the world ever saw; and finish off by tellin’ them ’ow you’ve turned your attention very extensively, to the subject, as applied to this part of the country, and with the aid of a certain degree of geological knowledge, you have inwented a tile that you have no manner of doubt” —

  “But I’ve done nothin’ of the sort!” exclaimed the Marquis, throwing up his hands in alarm, his ma having taught him never to tell fibs.

  “Never mind that,” replied Mr. Jorrocks, “never mind that; I’ve done it for you — I’ve done it for you — and it’s as old as the ‘ills, that wot you do by another, you do by, yourself. Here, see,” said he, pulling an old letter back out of his pocket, “here are the component parts of the tile; and whether they adopt it or not, it will show your great interest in agricultural concerns, and make you poppilar with the farmers; but I think comin’ from you they will adopt it, for it’s extonishin’ how even the commonest people are led away by great people and great names. Well, howsomever, never mind, this is it (reading). Take of stiff, strong clay two stun (stone) four punds, add to this two stun of fine river or sea gravel, and one stun three punds of finely sifted lime, mex them well together, by stirrin’ for a couple hours, and when of a proper consistency add one stun of coarse brown or Muscovado sugar, sluice the whole with ‘ot water, and then pour it into the tile shapes, and you will have for, for, for — you may say — worry little tin, one ‘undred werry good tiles. In course,” added Mr. Jorrocks, “this calkilation is not quite perfect; indeed I’ve not had time to work the thing out properly, but you can give it as a werry promisin’ experiment, and one that will amply repay further inwestigation.”

  “But I’m afraid I don’t sufficiently understand the thing myself, Mr. — Mr. — Mr. Jorrocks, to be able to explain it to the farmers.”

  “Oh, never mind that,” replied our worthy friend, “never mind that. No questions axed on these occasions: state broadly and confidently, and unless they’ve tried the experiment themselves they can’t contradict you. In this case I’m sure they haven’t tried it.”

  “But the sugar rather puzzles me,” observed the Marquis.

  “Not at all,” replied Mr. Jorrocks, “not at all; at all ewents it only shows you don’t rightly understand the natur’ o’ sugar — nothin’ so glutinacious as sugar — sugar is of four kinds, brown or Muscovado, refined or loaf, sugar-candy, and clayed sugar; clayed sugar of itself would bespeak a connection with drainin’ tiles. The old ancients used to think it was a gum collected from the canes, strong as glue.” —

  “But why not use the clayed sugar, instead of the Muscovado?” inquired the Marquis.

  “Jest as you please,” replied Mr. Jorrocks, “jest as you please;” adding aloud to himself—” only there must be sugar in the concern, or it won’t suit my book botherin’ my ‘ead about it.”

  “Yell then, now you understand,” resumed our grocer-farmer Squire; “you can let off wot you like at startin’ — talk about Julius Cæsar, Romeo Coates, or any of them old codgers, but you must lower your steam down to ordinary levels; and when you talk about the newest fashions in farmin’, you can introduce that tile as one of the newest fashions you have heard of, if you don’t like to say it’s your own. When you’ve done that, you can finish with my werry good ‘ealth, and refer with satisfaction to the adwantage of your appearin’ before a body o’ farmers under the auspices of a gen’lman so distinguished in the annals o’ agricultur’ as myself — you twig? Sugar again, in fact!”

  Just as our farmer friends had got thus far in their arrangements, the “clatter versus patter” of Batsay’s tongue and dishes in the kitchen, together with certain savoury smells, caught Mr. Jorrocks’s nose and ear, and raising his hand as if in the act of tallyhoing a fox, he exclaimed, “‘Ark! there’s the joyful sound — feedin’ time’s at ‘and.”

  “What time is your breakfast?” inquired the Marquis. “Breakfast! it’s dinner!” replied Mr. Jorrocks.

  “What! dinner at three?” rejoined the Marquis, taking the most diminutive Geneva watch out of his waistcoat pocket.

  “You surely wouldn’t breakfast at three!” observed Mr. Jorrocks.

  “Why, no; but I thought it was what London people call a breakfast — soups, poultry, venison, pastry, everything except fish — something between three and seven you know.”

  “Call it vot you like,” said Mr. Jorrocks, “I means to make it my dinner — and precious ‘ungry I am too; been up since six— ‘mong the dandylions — only had four heggs, two chops, and a kidney: don’t do for us farmers to lie long in bed.”

  “I had better be dressing then,” said the Marquis.

  “Dressin’! Vy, you’re smart enough, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, but I can’t appear in public in these travelling things; must be got up properly — dress you know is half the battle in speaking. My governess used to tell me that if Tully himself had pronounced one of his orations with a blanket about his shoulders, more people would have laughed at his dress than admired his eloquence.”

  “‘Ang Tully,” replied Mr. Jorrocks, in a fidget lest the Marquis should keep his entertainment waiting; “you can jest wesh your ‘ands, and put your fine clothes on arterwards; I’ll bring you a basin and towl in here, and save you the trouble of goin’ upstairs.”

  “Oh, but I want Adolphe!” —

  “Adolphe! Who the devil’s Adolphe?”

  “My valet.”

  “Your walet! Surely your walet don’t wash you, does he?”

  “No, but he arranges my hair — it’s all out of curl — helps me on with my clothes, and saves me a world of trouble; I’ll ring for him, if you please.” So saying, the Marquis gave the bell a pull; and Mr. Jorrocks, seeing there was no alternative, conducted him up to his room, charging him over and over again not to be above five minutes at most.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  WHEN WE HAVE stuff’d

  These pipes and these conveyances of our blood

  With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls

  Than in our priest-like fasts.” — SHAKSPEARE.

  JOSHUA SNEAKINGTON Laving persuaded Mr. Jorrocks that he had better leave the receipt of rents and putting off requests a
nd complaints to him had taken his seat in great form in Mrs. Jorrocks’s postage-stamped boudoir, with a portfolio, inkstand, cash-box, and other paraphernalia of money-taking before him. He had each tenant ushered in separately, and was uncommonly pompous and precise with them all. Joshua, like most country people, had just a sufficient knowledge of farming to be able to put proper questions, and of course he was at home when discussing the state of farmhouses and buildings; moreover, there was a certain solemn thoughtful manner about Joshua that looked like wisdom and calculation. He would place his elbows on the table, and rest his chin upon his hand, and draw a loquacious tenant on by means of little coughs and monosyllabic responses until he had got everything out of him. His main object was to sift whether they were desirous of leases — on the usual terms, of course — a handsome douceur to the steward. Joshua having at length dismissed the last tenant, old Willey Goodheart, and replied to a strong expression of fear he had charged his mind with from the Grampound Gun and Tregony Times, relative to the injury the importation of foreign cattle was likely to do farmers, by assuring Willey that his fears were past date, for the cattle had come in and injured none but the importers, and the teeth of those who had tried them; and having counted the money and found it all right, and put everything away in a style becoming a scientific stone-mason, went to join Mr. Jorrocks, who was now receiving his farmer friends, who were fast assembling with enormous appetites. Mr. Jorrocks was coming the agriculturist in costume — the Jorrockian jacket, with a wheat ear and two or three heads of oats in his button-hole, a bright buff waistcoat and gilt buttons, patent cord shorts and rather baggy drab gaiters, showing the whiteness of his stockings and the jolly rotundity of his calves. He received his friends in his usual “ hale fellow well met” style, asked after the farmers’ wives and daughters, talked of turnips, aftermaths, and potato prospects, wishing all the time the Marquis would come down. At length he appeared; not with a coronet on his head, as some of them expected to see him, but clad in the height of ballroom fashion, affording a striking contrast to the rural attire of the company around.

  Dinner, as the country servants say, was then “sarved.” It was in the usual style of Jorrockian liberality — rounds of beef and saddles of mutton, fillets of veal and sucking-pigs, with puddings, pies, custards, jellies, tarts, all crammed on together. There was a novelty in the centre of the table, in the shape of a new horse-pail for an epergne. This was intended to serve a double purpose, an epergne at dinner and a punch-bowl after. It was painted white within and pea-green without, with a plough on each side, and the mottoes, “Speed the plough” and “Live and let live,” above and below, while tasteful garlands of real flowers encircled the parts where the hoops came round. Altogether it was a splendid affair and quite novel — Mr. Jorrocks is a great man for novelty. The Marquis, of course, was on the host’s right, Mr. Trotter was on his left, and down the long table were ranged tenants and neighbours — higgledy piggledy, just as they came. The Marquis, who had been the object of attention, was now deserted for the’ substantial viands heaped before them. At them each man went, with a vigour known only to rural appetites whetted by a long fast. Jorrocks commenced by, helping the Marquis to a piece of beef that perfectly astounded him. Then there was such ladling in with knives, such calling for ale, such smacking of lips, such runs upon favourite dishes, until at length the human voice divine, rising above the clatter of knives and plates, announced that nature was knocking under, and in due time the decks began to be cleared. The horse-pail, with a soup ladle for a spoon, having resumed its position in the middle of the table all smoking and reeking with rum punch, and such of the company as were too genteel to drink “grog” being supplied with wine, Mr. Jorrocks ran through the usual loyal and patriotic toasts, as the newspapers phrase them, at a brisk pace, in his usual felicitous manner, and then gathered himself together for his great let off of the day. Having called upon Joshua Sneakington, the vice, and Mr. Heavytail, who sat in charge of the horse-pail, to see that their neighbours charged their glasses, he gave a substantial hem and thus began: —

  “Frinds and fellow-farmers! lend me your ears! that’s to say, listen to wot I’ve got to say to ye. O my beloved ‘earers, I’ve come to teach you a thing or two — a thing or two wot’ll make men instead o’ mice on ye if you will but follow my adwice (applause). Believe me, I’m so chock full o’ knowledge that I can hardly get it out o’ the bung’ole o’ my ‘ead — knowledge o’ the purest kind, cull’d in the fairest fields o’ farmin’ science (applause). Ah, my beloved ‘earers, that’s to the pint, and your intelligent minds cap forrard to the find. The first step towards knowledge is to be satisfied of your ignorance! — there then you must all join! — write yourselves down jackasses, and John Jorrocks will put you on your legs again. Lord, wot a set o’ benighted-lookin’ cocks you all are,” added Mr. Jorrocks, casting his eye up and down the lines of bald heads all turned towards him. “I dare say there isn’t a man among ye wot ever heard o’ Columella, or o’ Cato, or o’ Mr. Warro (Varro), three o’ the greatest farmers whatever were foal’d; Wirgil, too, I dare say you are ignorant on, and Smith o’ Deanston, the greatest benefactor the world ever saw — monstrous benefactor!”

  Here Mr. Jorrocks swigged off his punch, and from a bundle of papers before him having selected one, he resumed.

  “Having,” said he, “introduced you to Columella, who I take it was a sort o’ Homan Smith o’ Deanston, I will read you wot he said about this all-important subject.

  “‘Many people imagine,’ says Columella, ‘that the sterility of our lands, which are much less fertile than in times past, proceeds from the intemperance o’ the hair, the inclemency o’ the seasons, or the alteration o’ the lands themselves, that weakened and exhausted by long and continual labour, they are at length incapable of producing their fruits with the same wigour, and in the same abundance as they were wont to do afore. But this is all an error.’

  “There, frinds and fellow-farmers,” said Mr. Jorrocks, “is the selfsame story that we have nowadays. ‘The seasons are changed!’ says each lazy ‘ound, thro win’ himself on his bed, or bustin’ into tears in a fit o’ despair. ‘The intemperance o’ the hair destroys all one’s efforts,’ says another, as he sneaks off to the public-’ouse. ‘The land’s worked out!’ says another, slopin’ off in the night without payin’ his rent.

  “That’s all my eye!” exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks. “I minds the fable o’ the dyin’ man and his sons, who he summoned about him. ‘My sons,’ said he, ‘I’m a-goin’ to cut my stick, wot I leaves behind you’ll find buried a foot and a ‘alf under ground.’ Well, the old gen’lman was as good as his word, and went; and after they’d got his remainders interred, they set about lookin’ for the silver, each with a spade, a diggin’ for ‘ard life a foot and an ‘alf underground. Howsomever, nothin’ wotever turned up, and in all ‘umane probability the old gen’lman was jest a ‘oaxing on ’em to make ’em work the land well, for the consequence of all this diggin’ was that they got sich amazin’ crops as proved a treasure of themselves. That was werry well done,” observed Mr. Jorrocks, handing his glass up for some more punch. “Believe me, beloved frinds and fellow-countrymen, the intemperance o man has much more to do with the misfortins o’ the land, than the intemperance o’ the hair. The intemperance o’ the hair is a mere matter o’ inexpensive moisture, but the intemperance o’ man is a double drain, a drain on his self and a drain on the soil. Not that J. J. would deny a farmer a cheerful glass, or conwert a

  ‘Bold peasantry, a country’s pride,’

  into a lot o’ cantin’, lily-livered, water-drinkin’ ‘umbugs; but drunkenness and farmin’ cannot thrive together, and the sooner a man wot opens a reglar account with the lusli crib shuts up shop, the better. —

  “Then as to the land bein’ weaken’d and exhausted by continual labour, that too is all my eye. If men, from want o’ farmin’ knowledge, will force crops upon the soil wot it has no taste for, no doubt you may make the l
and sick, jest as you might make yourselves so by eatin’ figs it you don’t like them, or have served an apprenticeship to a grocer. It’s jest the same thing. A grocer surfeits-his ‘prentices with figs at startin’, and the youth never wants none after: so if you surfeit your land with wot we Frenchmen called ‘ toujours perdrix,’ goose every day, you can’t be surprised if it at length refuse to grow whoats.