Читать книгу I Travel the Open Road - Classic Writings of Journeys Taken around the World - Various - Страница 13

One of the hop-picking women told me how she went to church and the parson preached such a curious sermon, all about our 'innerds' (inwards, insides), and how many 'boanes' we had, and by-and-by 'he told us that we were the only beasts who had the use of our hands.' Years since at village schools the girls used to swallow pins; first one would do it, then another, presently half the school were taking pins. Ignorant of physiology! Yet they did not seem to suffer; the pins did not penetrate the pleura or lodge in the processes. Now Anatomy climbs into the pulpit and shakes a bony fist at the congregation. That is the humerus of it, as Corporal Nym might say. At the late election—the cow election—the candidates were Brown, Conservative, and Stiggins, Liberal. The day after the polling a farm labourer was asked how he filled up his voting paper. 'Oh,' said he full of the promised cow, 'I doan't care for that there Brown chap, he bean't no good; zo I jest put a cross agen he, and voted for Stiggins.' The dream of life was accomplished, the labourer had a vote, and—irony—he voted exactly opposite to his intent.

Too-whoo! ooo!—the sound of a horn,—the hunt was up; but this was not the hunting season. Looking out of the kiln door I saw a boy running at full speed down the lane with a small drain-pipe tucked under his arm. He stopped, put the pipe to his mouth, and blew a blast on this 'dread horn,' then jumped through a gap in the hedge and disappeared. They were playing fox and hounds; who but a boy would have thought of using a drain-pipe for a horn? It gave a good note, too. In and about the kiln I learned that if you smash a frog with a stone, no matter how hard you hit him, he cannot die till sunset. You must be careful not to put on any new article of clothing for the first time on a Saturday, or some severe punishment will ensue. One person put on his new boots on a Saturday, and on Monday broke his arm. Some still believe in herbs, and gather wood-betony for herb tea, or eat dandelion leaves between slices of dry toast. There is an old man living in one of the villages who has reached the age of a hundred and sixty years, and still goes hop-picking. Ever so many people had seen him, and knew all about him; an undoubted fact, a public fact; but I could not trace him to his lair. His exact whereabouts could not be fixed. I live in hopes of finding him in some obscure 'Hole' yet (many little hamlets are 'Holes,' as Froghole, Foxhole). What an exhibit for London! Did he realise his own value, he would soon come forth. I joke, but the existence of this antique person is firmly believed in. Sparrows are called 'spadgers.' The cat wandering about got caught in the rat-clams—i.e. a gin. Another cat was the miller's favourite at the windmill, a well-fed, happy, purring pussy, fond of the floury miller—he as white as snow, she as black as a coal. One day pussy was ingeniously examining the machinery, when the wind suddenly rose, the sails revolved, and she was ground up, fulfilling the ogre's threat—'I'll grind his bones to make my bread.' This was not so sad as the fate of the innkeeper's cow. You have read the 'Arabian Nights'—that book of wisdom, for in truth the stories are no stories; they are the records of ancient experience, the experience of a thousand years, and some of them are as true and as deeply to be pondered on as anything in the holiest books the world reverences. You remember the Three Calenders, each of whom lost an eye—struck out in the most arbitrary and cruel fashion. The innkeeper had a cow, a very pretty, quiet cow, but in time it came about that her left horn, turning inwards, grew in such a manner that it threatened to force the point into her head. To remedy this the top of the horn was sawn off and a brass knob fastened on the tip, as is the custom. The cow passed the summer in the meadows with the rest, till by-and-by it was found that she had gone blind in the left eye. It happened in this way: the rays of the sun heated the brass knob and so destroyed the sight. Unable to call attention to its suffering, the poor creature was compelled to endure, and could not escape. Now the Three Calenders could speak, and had the advantage of human intelligence, and yet each lost an eye, and they were as helpless in the hands of fate as this poor animal.

Down in one of the hamlets there was a forge to which all the workpeople who wanted any tools sharpened carried their instruments, the smith being able to put a better edge on. Other blacksmiths or carpenters, if they required a particularly good edge for some purpose, came to him. This art he had acquired from his grandfather as a sort of heirloom or secret. The grandfather while at work used to trouble and puzzle himself how to get a very sharp edge, and at length one night he dreamed how to do it. From that time he became prosperous. If a celebrated sonata was revealed in a dream, why not the way to sharpen a chisel?

When he was tired the drier said he was 'dreggy.' They were talking of the lambs, and how that dry season they had scarcely any sweetbreads. The sweetbreads were so scanty, the butchers did not even offer them for sale; the lambs had fed on dry food. In seasons when there was plenty of grass and green food they had good large sweetbreads, white as milk. The character of the food does thus under some circumstances really alter the condition of an organ. The sweetbread is the pancreas; now a deficient pancreatic action is supposed to play a great part in consumption and other wasting diseases. Have we here, then, an indication that when the pancreas may be suspected plenty of succulent food and plenty of liquid are nature's remedies? We looked over at the pigs in the sty. They were rooting about in a mess of garbage. 'Oh, what dirty things pigs are!' said a lady. 'Yes, ma'am; they're rightly named,' said he. Some scientific gentleman in the district had a large telescope with which he made frequent observations, and at times would let a labouring man look at the moon. 'Ah,' said our friend, shaking his head in a solemn, impressive way, 'my brother, he see through it; he see great rocks and seas up there. He say he never want to see through it no more. He wish he never looked through him at all.' The poor man was dreadfully frightened at what he had seen in the moon. At first I laughed at the story and the odd idea of a huge, great fellow being alarmed at a glance through a telescope. Since then, however, on reflection, it seems to me perfectly natural. He was illiterate; he had never read of astronomy; to him it was really like a sudden peep into another world, for the instrument was exceptionally powerful, and the view of the sunlight on the peaks and the shadows in the valleys must have been extraordinary to him. There was nothing to laugh at; the incident shows what a great and wonderful thing it is that rocks and mountains should be whirled along over our heads. The idea has become familiarised to us by reading, but the fact is none the less marvellous. This man saw the fact first, before he had the idea, and he had sufficient imagination to realise it. At the village post office they ask for 'Letterhead, please, sir,' instead of a stamp, for it is characteristic of the cottager that whatever words he uses must be different from those employed by other people. Stamp is as familiar to him as to you, yet he prefers to say 'letterhead'—because he does. There are many curious old houses, some of them timbered, still standing in these parts. The immense hearths which were once necessary for burning wood are now occupied with 'duck's-nest' grates, so called from the bars forming a sort of nest. In one of the hamlets the women touched their hats to us.

Not far from the hop-kiln I found a place where charcoal-burning was carried on. The brown charcoal-burner, upright as a bolt, walked slowly round the smouldering heap, and wherever flame seemed inclined to break out cast damp ashes upon the spot. Six or seven water-butts stood in a row for his use. To windward he had built a fence of flakes, or wattles as they are called here, well worked in with brushwood, to break the force of the draught along the hill-side, which would have caused too fierce a fire. At one side stood his hut of poles meeting in a cone, wrapped round with rough canvas. Besides his rake and shovel and a short ladder, he showed me a tool like an immense gridiron, bent half double, and fitted to a handle in the same way as a spade. This was for sifting charcoal when burned, and separating the small from the larger pieces. Every now and then a puff of smoke rose from the heap and drifted along; it has a peculiar odour, a dense, thick smell of smothered wood coal, to me not disagreeable, but to some people so annoying that they have been known to leave their houses and abandon a locality where charcoal-burning was practised. Dim memories of old days come crowding round me, invisible to him, to me visible and alive, of the kings, great hunters, who met with the charcoal-burners in the vast forests of mediæval days, of the noble knights and dames whom the rude charcoal-burners guided to their castles through trackless wastes, and all the romance of old. Scarcely is there a tale of knightly adventure that does not in some way or other mention these men, whose occupation fixed them in the wildernesses which of yore stretched between cultivated places. I looked at the modern charcoal-burner with interest. He was brown, good-looking, upright, and distinctly superior in general style to the common run of working men. He spoke without broad accent and used correct language; he was well educated and up to the age. He knew his own mind, and had an independent expression; a very civil, intelligent, and straightforward man. No rude charcoal-burner of old days this. We stood close to the highway road; a gentleman's house was within stone's throw; the spot, like the man, was altogether the reverse of what we read in ancient story. Yet such is the force of association that I could not even now divest myself of those dim memories and living dreams of old; there seemed as it were the clank of armour, a rustic of pennons in the leaves; it would have been quite natural to hold bow and arrow in the hand. The man was modern, but his office was ancient. The descent was unbroken. The charcoal-burner traced back to the Norman Conquest. That very spot where we stood, now surrounded with meadows and near dwellings, scarcely thirty years since had formed part of one of the largest of the old forests. It was forest land. Woods away on the slope still remained to witness to traditions. As the charcoal-burner worked beside the modern highway, so his trade had come down and was still practised in the midst of modern trades, in these times of sea-coal and steam. He told me that he and his brothers were maintained by charcoal-burning the year through, and, it appeared, in a very comfortable position. They only burned a small quantity here; they moved about from place to place in the woods, according as the timber was thrown. They often stopped for weeks in the woods, watching the fires all night. A great part of the work was done in the winter, beginning in October—after the hop-picking. Now resting in his lonely hut, now walking round and tending the smoking heap, the charcoal-burner watched out the long winter nights while the stars drifted over the leafless trees, till the grey dawn came with hoar-frost. He liked his office, but owned that the winter nights were very long. Starlight and frost and slow time are the same now as when the red deer and the wild boar dwelt in the forest. Much of the charcoal was prepared for hop-drying, large quantities being used for that purpose. At one time a considerable amount was rebaked for patent fuel, and the last use to which it had been put was in carrying out some process with Australian meat. It was still necessary in several trades. Goldsmiths used charcoal for soldering. They preferred the charcoal made from the thick bark of the butts of birch trees. At the foot or butt of the birch the bark grows very thick, in contrast to the rind higher, which is thinner than on other trees. Lord Sheffield's mansion at Fletching was the last great house he knew that was entirely warmed with charcoal, nothing else being burnt. Charcoal was still used in houses for heating plates. But the principal demand seemed to be for hop-drying purposes—the charcoal burned in the kiln where I had been resting was made on the spot. This heap he was now burning was all of birch poles, and would be four days and four nights completing. On the fourth morning it was drawn, and about seventy sacks were filled, the charcoal being roughly sorted.

The ancient forest land is still wild enough, there is no seeming end to the heath and fern on the ridges or to the woods in the valleys. These moor-like stretches bear a resemblance to parts of Exmoor. The oaks that once reached from here to the sea-shore were burned to smelt the iron in the days when Sussex was the great iron land. For charcoal the vast forests were cut down; it seems strange to think that cannon were once cast—the cannon that won India for us—where now the hops grow and the plough travels slowly, so opposite as they are to the roaring furnace and the ringing hammer. Burned and blasted by the heat, the ground where the furnaces were still retains the marks of the fire. But to-day there is silence; the sunshine lights up the purple heather and the already yellowing fern; the tall and beautiful larches stand graceful in the stillness. Their lines always flow in pleasant curves; they need no wind to bend them into loveliness of form: so quiet and deserted is the place that the wide highway road is green with vegetation, and the impression of our wheels is the only trace upon them. Looking up, the road—up the hill—it appears green almost from side to side. It is well made and firm, and fit for any traffic; but a growth of minute weeds has sprung up, and upon these our wheels leave their marks. Of roads that have become grass—grown in war—desolated countries we have all read, but this is our own unscathed England.

The nature of the ancient forest, its quiet and untrodden silence, adheres to the site. Far down in the valley there is more stirring, and the way is well pulverised. In the hollow there is an open space, backed by the old beech trees of the park, dotted with ashes, and in the midst a farmhouse partly timbered. Here by the road-side they point out to you a low mound, at the very edge of the road, which could easily be passed unnoticed as a mere heap of scrapings overgrown with weeds and thistles. On looking closer it appears more regularly shaped; it is indeed a grave. Of old time an unfortunate woman committed suicide, and according to the barbarous law of those days her body was buried at the cross-roads and a stake driven through it. That was the end so far as the brutal law of the land went. But the road-menders, with better hearts, from that day to this have always kept up the mound. However beautiful the day, however beautiful the beech trees and the ashes that stand apart, there is always a melancholy feeling in passing the place. This thistle-grown mound saddens the whole; it is impossible to forget it; it lies, as it were, under everything, under the beeches, the sunlit sward and fern. The mark of death is there. The dogs and the driven cattle tread the spot; a human being has passed into dust. The circumstance of the mound having been kept up so many years bears curious testimony to the force of tradition. Many writers altogether deny the value of tradition. Dr. Schliemann's spade, however, found Troy. Perhaps tradition is like the fool of the saying, and is sometimes right.

A chapter from

Field and Hedgerow, 1889