The Country-Side: Sussex

________________________________________________
Title:     The Country-Side: Sussex
Author: Richard Jefferies [More Titles by Jefferies]

I

On the wall of an old barn by the great doors there still remains a narrow strip of notice-board, much battered and weather-beaten: 'Beware of steel ----' can be read, the rest has been broken off, but no doubt it was 'traps.' 'Beware of steel traps,' a caution to thieves--a reminiscence of those old days which many of our present writers and leaders of opinion seem to think never existed. When the strong labourer could hardly earn 7_s_. a week, when in some parishes scarcely half the population got work at all, living, in the most literal sense, on the parish, when bread was dear and the loaf was really life itself, then that stern inscription had meaning enough. The granaries were full, the people half starved. The wheat was threshed by the flail in full view of the wretched, who could gaze through the broad doors at the golden grain; the sparrows helped themselves, men dare not. At night men tried to steal the corn, and had to be prevented by steel traps, like rats. To-day wheat is so cheap, it scarcely pays to carry it to market. Some farmers have it ground, and sell the flour direct to the consumer; some have used it for feeding purposes--actually for hogs. The contrast is extraordinary. Better let the hogs eat the corn than that man should starve. To-day the sparrows are just as busy as ever of old, chatter, chirp around the old barn, while the threshing machine hums, and every now and then lowers its voice in a long-drawn descending groan of seemingly deep agony. Up it rises again as the sheaves are cast in--hum, hum, hum; the note rises and resounds and fills the yard up to the roof of the barn and the highest tops of the ricks as a flood fills a pool, and overflowing, rushes abroad over the fields, past the red hop-oast, past the copse of yellowing larches, onwards to the hills. An inarticulate music--a chant telling of the sunlit hours that have gone and the shadows that floated under the clouds over the beautiful wheat. No more shall the tall stems wave in the wind or listen to the bees seeking the clover-fields. The lark that sang above the green corn, the partridge that sheltered among the yellow stalks, the list of living things delighting in it--all have departed. The joyous life of the wheat is ended--not in vain, for now the grain becomes the life of man, and in that object yet more glorified. Outwards the chant extending, reaches the hollows of the valley, rolling over the shortened stubble, where the plough already begins the first verse of a new time. A pleasant sound to listen to, the hum of the threshing, the beating of the engine, the rustle of the straw, the shuffle shuffle of the machine, the voices of the men, the occupation and bustle in the autumn afternoon! I listened to it sitting in the hop-oast, whose tower, like a castle turret, overlooks and domineers the yard. In the loft the resounding hum whirled around, beating and rebounding from the walls, and forcing its way out again through the narrow window. The edge, as it were, of a sunbeam lit up the rude chamber crossed with unhewn beams and roofed above with unconcealed tiles, whose fastening pegs were visible. A great heap of golden scales lay in one corner, the hops fresh from the drying. Up to his waist in a pocket let through the floor a huge giant of a man trod the hops down in the sack, turning round and round, and now his wide shoulders and now his red cheeks succeeded. The music twirled him about as a leaf by the wind. Without the rich blue autumn sky; within the fragrant odour of hops, the hum of the threshing circling round like the buzz of an immense bee. As the hum of insects high in the atmosphere of midsummer suits and fits to the roses and the full green meads, so the hum of the threshing suits to the yellowing leaf and drowsy air of autumn. The iteration of hum and monotone soothes, and means so much more in its inarticulation than the adjusted chords and tune of written music. Laughing, the children romped round the ricks; they love the threshing and flock to it, they watch the fly-wheel rotating, they look in at the furnace door when the engine-driver stokes his fire, they gaze wonderingly at the gauge, and long to turn the brass taps; then with a shout they rush to chase the unhappy mice dislodged from the corn. The mice hide themselves in the petticoats of the women working at the 'sheening,' and the cottager when she goes home in the evening calls her cat and shakes them out of her skirts. By a blue waggon the farmer stands leaning on his staff. He is an invalid, and his staff, or rather pole, is as tall as himself; he holds it athwart, one end touching the ground beyond his left foot, the other near his right shoulder. His right hand grasps it rather high, and his left down by his hip, so that the pole forms a line across his body. In this way he is steadied and supported and his whole weight relieved, much more so than it would be with an ordinary walking-stick or with one in each hand. When he walks he keeps putting the staff, which he calls a bat, in front, and so poles himself along. There is an invalid boy in the yard, who walks with a similar stick. The farmer is talking with a friend who has looked in from the lane in passing, and carries a two-spean spud, or Canterbury hoe, with points instead of a broad blade. They are saying that it is a 'pretty day,' 'pretty weather'--it is always 'pretty' with them, instead of fine. Pretty weather for the hopping; and so that leads on to climbing up into the loft and handling the golden scales. The man with the hoe dips his brown fist in the heap and gathers up a handful, noting as he does so how the crisp, brittle, leaf-life substance of the hops crackles, and yet does not exactly break in his palm. They must be dry, yet not too dry to go to powder. They cling a little to the fingers, adhering to the skin, sticky. He looks for rust and finds none, and pronounces it a good sample. 'But there beant nothen' now like they old Grapes used to be,' he concludes. The pair have not long gone down the narrow stairs when a waggon stops outside in the lane, and up comes the carter to speak with the 'drier'--the giant trampling round in the pocket--and to see how the hops 'be getting on.' In five minutes another waggoner looks in, then a couple of ploughboys, next a higgler passing by; no one walks or rides or drives past the hop-kiln without calling to see how things are going on. The carters cannot stay long, but the boys linger, eagerly waiting a chance to help the 'drier,' even if only to reach him his handkerchief from the nail. Round and round in the pocket brings out the perspiration, and the dust of the hops gets into the air-passages and thickens on the skin of his face. One of the lads has to push the hops towards him with a rake. 'Don't you step on 'em too much, that'll break 'em.' On the light breeze that comes now and then a little chaff floats in at the open window from the threshing. A crooked sort of face appears in the doorway, the body has halted halfway up--a semi-gipsy face--and the fellow thrusts a basket before him on the floor. 'Want any herrings?' 'No, thankie--no,' cries the giant. 'Not to-day, measter; thusty enough without they.' Herrings are regularly carried round in hop-time to all the gardens, and there is a great sale for them among the pickers. By degrees the 'drier' rises higher in the pocket, coming up, as it were, through the floor first his shoulders, then his body, and now his knees are visible. This is the ancient way of filling a hop pocket; a machine is used now in large kilns, but here, where there is only one cone, indicative of a small garden, the old method is followed.

The steps on which I sit lead up to the door of the cone. Inside, the green hops lie on the horsehair carpet, and the fumes of the sulphur burning underneath come up through them. A vapour hangs about the surface of the hops; looking upwards, the diminishing cone rises hollow to the cowl, where a piece of blue sky can be seen. Round the cone a strip of thin lathing is coiled on a spiral; could any one stand on these steps and draw the inside of the cone? Could perspective be so managed as to give the idea of the diminishing hollow and spiral? the side opposite would not be so difficult, but the bit this side, overhead and almost perpendicular, and so greatly foreshortened, how with that? It would be necessary to make the spectator of the drawing feel as if this side of the cone rose up from behind his head; as if his head were just inside the cone. Would not this be as curious a bit of study as any that could be found in the interior of old Continental churches, which people go so many miles to see? Our own land is so full of interest. There are pictures by the oldest Master everywhere in our own country, by the very Master of the masters, by Time, whose crooked signature lies in the corner of the shadowy farmhouse hearth.

Beneath the loft, on the ground-floor, I found the giant's couch. The bed of a cart had been taken off its wheels, forming a very good bedstead, dry and sheltered on three sides. On the fourth the sleeper's feet were towards the charcoal fire. Opening the furnace door, he could sit there and watch the blue and green tongues of sulphur flame curl round about and above the glowing charcoal, the fumes rising to the hops on the horsehair high over. The 'hoppers' in the garden used to bring their kettles and pots to boil, till the practice grew too frequent, and was stopped, because the constant opening of the furnace wasted the heat. The sulphur comes in casks. A sulphur cask sawn down the middle, with a bit left by the head for cover, is often used by the hoppers as a cradle. Another favourite cradle is made from a trug basket, the handle cut off. It is then like half a large eggshell, with cross pieces underneath to prevent it from canting aside. This cradle is set on the bare ground in the garden; when they move one woman takes hold of one end and a second of the other, and thus carry the infant. If you ask them, they will find you a 'hop-dog,' a handsome green caterpillar marked with black velvet stripes and downy bands between. Their labour usually ends early in the afternoon.

The giant at the kiln must watch and bide his time the night through till the hops are ready to be withdrawn from the cone. He is alone. Deep shadows gather round the farmstead and the ricks, and there is not a sound, nothing but the rustle of a leaf falling from the hollow oak by the gateway. But at midnight, just as the drier is drawing the hops, a thunderstorm bursts, and the blue lightning lights up the red cone without, blue as the sulphur flames creeping over the charcoal within. It is lonely work for him in the storm. By day he has many little things to do between the greater labours, to make the pockets (or sacks) by sewing the sackcloth, or to mark the name of the farmer and the date with stencil plates. For sewing up the mouth of the pocket when filled there is a peculiar kind of string used; you may see it hanging up in any of the country 'stores;' they are not shops, but stores of miscellaneous articles. He must be careful not to fill his pockets too full of hops, not to tread them too closely, else the sharp folk in the market will suspect that unfair means have been resorted to to increase the weight, and will cut the pocket all to pieces to see if it contains a few bricks. Nor must it be too light; that will not do.

In this district, far from the great historic hop-fields of Kent, the hops are really grown in gardens, little pieces often not more than half an acre or even less in extent. Capricious as a woman, hops will only flourish here and there; they have the strongest likes and dislikes, and experience alone finds out what will suit them. These gardens are always on a slope, if possible in the angle of a field and under shelter of a copse, for the wind is the terror, and a great gale breaks them to pieces; the bines are bruised, bunches torn off, and poles laid prostrate. The gardens being so small, from five to forty acres in a farm, of course but few pickers are required, and the hop-picking becomes a 'close' business, entirely confined to home families, to the cottagers working on the farm and their immediate friends. Instead of a scarcity of labour, it is a matter of privilege to get a bin allotted to you. There are no rough folk down from Bermondsey or Mile End way. All staid, stay-at-home, labouring people--no riots; a little romping no doubt on the sly, else the maids would not enjoy the season so much as they do. But there are none of those wild hordes which collect about the greater fields of Kent. Farmers' wives and daughters and many very respectable girls go out to hopping, not so much for the money as the pleasant out-of-door employment, which has an astonishing effect on the health. Pale cheeks begin to glow again in the hop-fields. Children who have suffered from whooping-cough are often sent out with the hop-pickers; they play about on the bare ground in the most careless manner, and yet recover. Air and hops are wonderful restoratives. After passing an afternoon with the drier in the kiln, seated close to a great heap of hops and inhaling the odour, I was in a condition of agreeable excitement all the evening. My mind was full of fancy, imagination, flowing with ideas; a sense of lightness and joyousness lifted me up. I wanted music, and felt full of laughter. Like the half-fabled haschish, the golden bloom of the hops had entered the nervous system; intoxication without wine, without injurious after-effect, dream intoxication; they were wine for the nerves. If hops only grew in the Far East we should think wonders of so powerful a plant. At hop-picking a girl can earn about 10_s_. a week, so that it is not such a highly paid employment as might be supposed from the talk there is about it. The advantages are sideways, so to say; a whole family can work at the same time, and the sum-total becomes considerable. Hopping happily comes on just after corn harvest, so that the labourers get two harvest-times. The farmers find it an expensive crop. It costs 50_l_. or 60_l_. to pick a very small garden, and if the Egyptian plague of insects has prevailed the price at market will not repay the expenditure. The people talk much of a possible duty on foreign hops. The hop farmer should have a lady-bird on his seal ring for his sign and token, for the lady-bird is his great friend. Lady-birds (and their larvae) destroy myriads of the aphides which cause rust, and a flight of lady-birds should be welcomed as much as a flight of locusts is execrated in other countries.

 

II.

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 mediaeval 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.

[The end]
Richard Jefferies's essay: The Country-Side: Sussex

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN