Part 9
The older I grow the more respect I have for the wise people who cannot read or write. The shepherd cannot read or write, yet conversation with him is as natural as if he knew all the jargons. I never find myself (who have both read and written more than is good for any one) hunting for words within his vocabulary. He has a sly, glancing humour that would make the fortune of an author, and observing eyes that would make the fortune of two. He misses nothing; and, having nothing to confuse and congest his mind, he has forgotten nothing.
He describes well; but his adjectives are very few: “tidy” and “middling” for ordinary praise, “out-an’-out” for eulogy. His Bible at home is “out-an’-out old”; his watch “out-an’-out big.” Where you and I say we will consider it, he says “insider.” He is that rare thing in a Southern county, an independent labourer. The vicar met him not long since, remarking that he had not seen him lately. “No, I beänt much pestered by parsons,” he replied. I can think of no more disconcerting reply to a kindly question; but it was not cruelly meant. It merely comes to this, that his attitude to the world is defensive.
He regrets many things that are no more, not the least being the days when wheatears were still eaten and the shepherds had in August an easy way of adding to their very scanty wages by trapping these little plump birds and selling them to the Brighton poulterers. But that is all done with, and the only opportunity of earning a little extra money that he now has is by stopping earths for the hunt just before the meet; which to me seems to be not quite playing the game.
He looks back, too, to the smuggling days with a certain wistfulness; not that he did any himself, but he could not help knowing what was going on, and he remembers more than one exciting arrest; while his grandmother, over at Lullington, near Alfriston, was always well in with the smugglers, and once went so far as to conceal some tubs under her skeps, which the Revenue officer never thought of searching, partly, no doubt, for fear of the bees. But the shepherd has the same tale as the fisherman in the Georgian town--the same tale, although the fisherman represents the sea-smugglers and the shepherd the land-smugglers. The end of smuggling, they both say, was not so much the vigilance of the coastguard as the prevalence of the informer. Small village life in Sussex and along the coast in the early years of Victoria seems to have been ruined by the presence of informers. A good field for a novelist here! For the most part those writers who have dealt with smuggling, from G. P. R. James to Mr. Meade Falkner, have confined themselves to its perils and triumphs; but the tale-bearer is perhaps better material--psychologically at any rate. Anyway, it was the tale-bearer who prevailed, and bit by bit the old, alluring, dangerous game was dropped. “The man who lived in the cottage next to you,” says the shepherd, “was a rare smuggler. He did more work at night than ever he did by day, though he had to show up in the fields just to keep them from being too suspicious.”
Although the shepherd has never been to London, he has done some travelling; but that, too, is a thing of the past. Once he used to take his lambs to the great Sussex “ship fairs” to be sold--to Lindfield and the “Bat and Ball” at Chiddingly, and so forth. But now that ancient custom also has gone, so far as he is concerned, for the new farmer prefers to offer them by auction at the nearest town; and the boy can drive them there. “A foolish boy,” the shepherd finds him, “always thinking of something else instead of the ship. Book-learning, I suppose.”
Mus Penfold, although mostly smiling and detached, has his anxieties too--and during the lambing season this year (1911) he has been bowed with care. For the weather’s hand was against him the whole time. I saw him continually throughout this trying period and for the first time realized not only how sound a man he is, but how many qualities the good shepherd needs. For he must be good doctor, good midwife and good nurse, apart from flock management altogether; and he must be prepared for little sleep, and the exercise of boundless patience and resignation. The lambs were born just across the road; and I was on that side almost as much as this.
“Well, shepherd, how many now?” “’Bout sixty, I reckon.” “How many twins?” “Eight couple o’ twins. There’s two you could put in your waistcoat-pocket. I’ll show you.” And I followed him through the straw of the shed, now divided into little hurdled cubicles, like a dormitory, with a mother and child in each, to the barn, where he picked up by the fore-legs two of the forlornest little objects you ever saw. “Reckon they’ll die,” he said. “I’ve been feeding them, but I reckon they’ll die. They’re out-an’-out miserable.”
Owing to the cold winds far too many did die; but there was “a big six hundred,” as the shepherd said, by the time all were in this green world. When a lamb died Mus Penfold removed its skin and placed it on the back of another for whom a foster-mother was needed. Then he put the living one thus clad into the pen with the bereaved mother, who, smelling its skin and finding it true, adopted the changeling without a murmur. The skin is fitted on rather ingeniously, with the living lamb’s legs through holes left for them and the neck tied with string; but it would take in no one with any intelligence. Either sheep are very incurious or the maternal instinct makes them careless, for the deception almost always succeeds. On the other hand, the maternal instinct can fail utterly; and there were usually one or two sheep whose heads had to be tied close to the hurdle to prevent them butting their lambs away.
This lambing season, by the way, was the only time when I ever saw the shepherd using his crook. As I have said, he carries it with him all the year--in fact, it is as inseparably his as the emblem of a Saint; but he never ordinarily uses it except as a staff or a gentle chastener of his dogs. But lately it was busy. I found him dragging newborn lambs over the straw with it, from the yard to the maternity ward, while he carried another by its fore-legs. The act looks, if not exactly cruel, at any rate thoughtless; but this is not so, for the shepherd is a tender man.
I never see a crowd of sheep without wanting a picture of them and thinking of pictures of others, although one can see cattle and horses and dogs and have no such pictorial wish or association. Why is this? Is it because sheep are so essentially pictorial--because, in the artist’s phrase, they always “compose”? I suppose so. However they stand or lie they make a harmony. That is why one so seldom sees a picture of sheep that is wholly bad; and similarly it is why every photograph of sheep is also a picture. An artist who sets out to depict sheep and makes an outrage must be crude indeed. No artist understood sheep better than Blake, although his type was, perhaps, a little too Eastern. But he made sheep lie about and occur exactly as sheep do. He did not force them into a picture, as Charles Jacque was a little too much inclined to do, nor pose them like Sidney Cooper. But then I have never seen sheep in real life like Sidney Cooper’s. My own favourite painters of sheep are Edward Calvert, Mauve, and J. F. Millet; but I possess a tiny drawing by Robert Hills, one of the founders of the Old Water-colour Society, which has as much feeling as any. I saw Millet’s most beautiful sheep-picture quite recently--his “Bergère gardant ses Moutons” under a full moon, and it is wonderful. I saw also three or four Jacques in the same collection--the new Chauchard Collection, just opened at the Louvre--and he again seemed to me a shade too brilliant for his subject. Millet came to his sheep as a part of life--the homely, melancholy, busy life that he knew--and painted them exactly in their relation to it; Jacque came to them rather as a heaven-sent subject for his brush. Millet, of course, poetised them, as he was bound to do, but never to their detriment: they remained sheep, just as his peasants, though poetised, remained peasants. Mauve saw sheep also as a part of the universe, but rather as a part of Nature than of life. Nor had Mauve Millet’s wistful depths. But there is a flock of sheep by Mauve, passing over the Laren dunes, that reaches, perhaps, the highest mark of true and beautiful animal-painting. Among the Old Masters I recall with most pleasure the sheep of the Bassano family, father and sons. In the gallery at Vienna they have a room to themselves, and a more attractive collection of warm stables and mangers I never saw. It is when I think of such pictures as these that my brain swoons at the idea of what the post-impressionists would make of a scene of sheep. There were none at the Grafton Galleries recently. May there never be any!
One pleasant development of sheep-nature that the lambing season brings about is accessibility. Usually there is no intercourse possible between man and sheep, except by the hard medium of a crook. Why sheep are so mistrustful I have never understood; for no one would hurt them, not even boys on Sunday afternoons. They know too that to man’s care they owe all their food and comfort, and yet the sight of a strange man or a child equally fills them with panic. How different a little early training can make sheep the adorable Billy proves. For Billy is as much a part of the human family as any child or grandfather ever was.
Billy is a pet lamb in the Midlands--in a river valley far from these austere hills. He is thick and sturdy, with a black face. He fears no one and nothing. His favourite resting-place is the very middle of a frequented path. When tired of repose he saunters about looking for mischief. If the gate is open he strolls into the street and pursues and butts the children. No lamb can ever have so entertained and exhilarated so many grown-up people. The children run and shout, Billy lowers his head and leaps and dances, the people rush to the doors to enjoy the fun. When there are no children he chases the hens or explores the back-gardens. Billy is fed with milk in an old oil can and at this formidable vessel he plunges several times a day, as though he had never eaten before, although he has been picking up trifles since dawn; and even when filled he rarely allows a stranger to pass without groping at his knees in an effort to derive sustenance from them.
I have never seen any other animal with more character than this three months old lamb. He is alive with it, as we say. His countenance is jaunty; his movements are elvish. He is in short an imp, as unlike, on the one hand, the timid foolish sheep of which our flocks are composed as, on the other, the sentimental pet lamb of Wordsworth’s poem. Looking at him one realizes what a waste of good spirits the ordinary method of sheep-rearing and sheep-tending leads to. If all lambs could be brought up by hand, one thinks, how merrie would England be!
But I have not put this possibility before Mus Penfold. He would smell something very treasonable. A humourist he may be, but he is no Radical.
Theologians at the Mitre
I remember hearing an ingenious journalist remark that if ever he were appointed editor of a literary paper he would now and then devote a whole number to reviews of one book only, each review to be the work of a critic of eminence who was unaware that his verdict was not (as is usual) the only one that would be printed. “Thus,” he added, “I should make an interesting number of my paper, while the differences of opinion in the reviews would healthily illustrate the vanity of criticism.”
After having just read, with much entertainment, in an old book, the record of the travels in England of an intelligent German in the year 1782, I am inclined to think that, were I the editor of a general paper, I should adapt my friend’s idea, and now and then induce several foreigners to visit my city or country and record their impressions in parallel columns; just to show the reader how we strike contemporaries and strangers. But here, of course, the differences of opinion would rather tend to complete the picture than to bring criticism into disrepute. The result would be like those myriad reflections of oneself that are obtained from the triple mirrors in hatters’ shops--all true, all different, and some exceedingly unfamiliar and surprising.
If one of my observers were a man as shrewd and philosophic as Charles Moritz, the 1782 traveller, the excellence of one column at any rate of that number would be assured, for Moritz had both eyes and a brain.
A pastor in his native land, he sailed for England alone in May, 1782, bent upon seeing London and, for some unexplained reason, the Peak of Derbyshire. He knew the language perfectly, from books; and he brought to his adventure an open and tolerant mind, courage, determination and humour. As it turned out, he found himself in need of all these qualities. Indeed, no good traveller can be without any of them. He wrote in German: my copy of his work was translated “by a Lady.”
Let us disembark at Dartford on 2 June, 1782, with Mr. Moritz, and proceed with him to London in a postchaise, by way of Greenwich. I have read of postchaises before, but never found them so vividly or informingly described as by this German pastor. It is worth while to pause a moment before going farther and ask ourselves what we know of postchaises in England in 1782. It will make Mr. Moritz the more interesting. Speaking for myself, I certainly did not know that three persons might (by Act of Parliament) ride for the same cost as one, and that the charge was fixed at a shilling a mile. Had you realized that? I had always thought of the postchaise as a luxury for the rich only, but this brings it within reach of much humbler purses. And now for the German: “These carriages are very neat and lightly built, so that you hardly perceive their motion, as they roll along these firm smooth roads; they have windows in front, and on both sides. The horses are generally good, and the postilions particularly smart and active, and always ride on a full trot. The one we had wore his hair cut short, a round hat, and a brown jacket, of tolerable fine cloth, with a nosegay in his bosom. Now and then, when he drove very hard, he looked round, and with a smile seemed to solicit our approbation.” This is quite a picture, is it not? Dickens could have made the postboy look round no less brightly and triumphantly, but he would have given him jokes. This is Dickens without language: Dickens on the cinematoscope.
The road to London is very prettily etched in. “A thousand charming spots, and beautiful landscapes, on which my eye would long have dwelt with rapture, were now rapidly passed with the speed of an arrow. Our road appeared to be undulatory, and our journey, like the journey of life, seemed to be a pretty regular alternation of uphill and down, and here and there it was diversified with copses and woods; the majestic Thames every now and then, like a little forest of masts, rising to our view, and anon losing itself among the delightful towns and villages. The amazing large signs which, at the entrance of villages, hang in the middle of the street, being fastened to large beams, which are extended across the street from one house to another opposite it, particularly struck me; these sign-posts have the appearance of gates, or of gateways, for which I first took them, but the whole apparatus, unnecessarily large as it seems to be, is intended for nothing more than to tell the inquisitive traveller that there is an inn. At length, stunned as it were by this constant rapid succession of interesting objects to engage our attention, we arrived at Greenwich nearly in a state of stupefaction.”
It is very much as a few years ago men wrote of their first motor-car ride, or as Mr. Grahame White’s passengers write now.
In London Mr. Moritz lodged with a tailor’s widow somewhere near the Adelphi. The family consisted “of the mistress of the house, her maid, and her two sons, Jacky and Jerry; singular abbreviations for John and Jeremiah. The eldest, Jacky, about twelve years old, is a very lively boy, and often entertains me in the most pleasing manner, by relating to me his different employments at school and afterwards desiring me, in my turn, to relate to him all manner of things about Germany. He repeats his _amo_, _amas_, _amavi_, in the same singing tone as our common-school boys. As I happened once, when he was by, to hum a lively tune, he stared at me with surprise, and then reminded me it was Sunday; and so, that I might not forfeit his good opinion by any appearance of levity, I gave him to understand that, in the hurry of my journey, I had forgotten the day.... When the maid is displeased with me, I hear her sometimes at the door call me ‘the German’; otherwise in the family I go by the name of ‘the Gentleman.’.” Quite an Addisonian touch.
The tailor’s widow was a woman out of the common, for a favourite author of hers was Milton, and she told her lodger that her “late husband first fell in love with her on this very account: because she read Milton with such proper emphasis.” This endeared her to her lodger too, for a pocket Milton was his inseparable companion during his travels. But I fear that when he proceeds to deduce from the widow a general love of the great authors among even the common English people, he goes too far. He made indeed the mistake that he might make to-day, when cheap reprints of classics are far more numerous than they were then: the mistake of supposing that people read what they possess. Classics are still largely furniture and decoration. For the most part, I fear, the owners of the hundred best books are reading something from the circulating library.
The widow and her servant looked after him well, giving him bread and butter cut as thin as “poppy leaves.” But what he liked even better was their toast: “another kind of bread and butter usually eaten with tea, which is toasted by the fire, and is incomparably good. You take one slice after the other and hold it to the fire on a fork till the butter is melted, so that it penetrates a number of slices at once. This is called toast.”--That seems to be a very pleasant touch. I wonder into how many books of travel in England toast has found its way.
His curiosity took him everywhere, sometimes without any introduction, and sometimes with a letter from the German Minister, Count Lucy. His first experience of the House of Commons, with no influence at his back, was amusing and illuminating. “Above there is a small staircase, by which you go to the gallery, the place allotted for strangers. The first time I went up this small staircase and had reached the rails, I saw a very genteel man in black standing there. I accosted him without any introduction, and asked him whether I might be allowed to go in the gallery. He told me that I must be introduced by a Member, or else I could not get admission there. Now, as I had not the honour to be acquainted with a Member, I was under the mortifying necessity of retreating, and again going downstairs: as I did, much chagrined. And now, as I was sullenly marching back, I heard something said about a bottle of wine, which seemed to be addressed to me. I could not conceive what it could mean, till I got home, when my obliging landlady told me, I should have given the well-dressed man half a crown, or a couple of shillings, for a bottle of wine.
“Happy,” he says, “in this information, I went again the next day; when the same man who before had sent me away, after I had given him only two shillings, very politely opened the door for me, and himself recommended me to a good seat in the gallery.”
Manners in Parliament seem to have improved a little. Mr. Moritz says: “The Members of the House of Commons have nothing particular in their dress; they even come into the house in their great-coats, and with boots and spurs. It is not at all uncommon to see a Member lying stretched out on one of the benches while others are debating. Some crack nuts, others eat oranges, or whatever else is in season. There is no end to their going in or out; and as often as any one wishes to go out, he places himself before the Speaker, and makes him his bow, as if, like a school-boy, he asked his tutor’s permission. Those who speak, seem to deliver themselves with but little, perhaps not always with even a decorous, gravity. All that is necessary is to stand up in your place, take off your hat, turn to the Speaker (to whom all the speeches are addressed), to hold your hat and stick in one hand, and with the other to make any such motions as you fancy necessary to accompany your speech.”
Mr. Moritz had good fortune, for he heard both Fox and Burke. He writes: “Charles Fox is a short, fat, and gross man, with a swarthy complexion, and dark; and in general he is badly dressed. There certainly is something Jewish in his looks. But upon the whole, he is not an ill-made nor an ill-looking man: and there are many strong marks of sagacity and fire in his eyes. I have frequently heard the people here say, that this same Mr. Fox is as cunning as a fox. Burke is a well-made, tall, upright man, but looks elderly and broken.” Burke was then only fifty-three, but he had just been excluded from the Cabinet.
A few weeks later, on his return to London, Moritz was again in the House to hear the debate on the death of the Marquis of Rockingham. Fox, General Conway, and Burke were the speakers. This is interesting: “Burke now stood up and made a most elegant, though florid speech, in praise of the late Marquis of Rockingham. As he did not meet with sufficient attention, and heard much talking and many murmurs, he said, with much vehemence, and a sense of injured merit, ‘This is not treatment for so old a Member of Parliament as I am, and I will be heard!’ On which there was immediately a most profound silence.”
Living authors seem to have had no interest for Mr. Moritz, and therefore we get no glimpse of Dr. Johnson; but he saw everything else. He went to Ranelagh and Vauxhall; to many of the churches, even preaching in one; to the British Museum and to the theatre, where he was so much taken with a musical farce called “The Agreeable Surprise” that he saw it again and wished to translate it into German. Edwin was the principal comedian. Although the play was good, the audience was very uncivil.
Here again it is not uninstructive to pause and ask ourselves for our views on the London theatre-gallery in 1782. It had not occurred to me that the gods were quite as high-spirited and powerful as Mr. Moritz describes them. In his seat in the pit Mr. Moritz became at once their target; but whether it was because he looked foreign, or because he had the effrontery to be able to afford to sit there, is not explained.
“Often and often, whilst I sat here, did a rotten orange or pieces of the peel of an orange fly past me, or past some of my neighbours, and once one of them actually hit my hat: without my daring to look round, for fear another might then hit me on the face. Besides this perpetual pelting from the gallery, which renders an English play-house so uncomfortable, there is no end to their calling out and knocking with their sticks, till the curtain is drawn up. I saw a miller’s, or a baker’s boy thus, like a huge booby, leaning over the rails and knocking again and again on the outside, with all his might, so that he was seen by everybody, without being in the least ashamed or abashed.