Old Country Life

"For the benefit of all my loving countrymen of this curious taste, I shall here publish a catalogue of greens to be disposed of by an eminent town gardener, who has lately applied to me upon this head. My correspondent is arrived at such perfection, that he cuts family pieces of men, women, or children. Any ladies that please may have their own effigies in myrtle, or their husbands in horn-beam. I shall proceed to his catalogue, as he sent it for my recommendation.

"'Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great storm, Eve and the serpent very flourishing.

"'The Tower of Babel, not yet finished.

"'St. George in box; his arm scarce long enough, but will be in condition to strike the dragon by next April.

"'A Queen Elizabeth in phylyræa, a little inclining to the green-sickness, but of full growth.

"'An old maid-of-honour in worm-wood.

"'Divers eminent poets in bays, somewhat blighted, to be disposed of a pennyworth.

"'A quickset hog shot up into a porcupine, by its being forgot a week in rainy weather,' &c."

But these absurdities do not affect the question of hedges. I know a hedge of clay and stone built up eight feet, and above that crowned with holly and thorn, running from east to west, but with a point or two of west in its face. I remember an old man, a rector, chronically affected with bronchitis for fifteen years, who felt the solace of this charming hedge through the whole time. He could crawl out there when the sun shone, and disregard the north and east winds. In that hedge the primrose and the foxglove were out prematurely. The rabbits loved it dearly, and made it untidy with their burrowings in the warm dry clay under the roots of the bushes.

If a ruthless craving for vistas had not prevailed in and after Horace Walpole's time, every one of our country houses and parsonages would have had these sweet sheltered walks, where invalids could creep along and bask in the sun. We have had them demolished, and so must away to the Riviera. Evelyn had a great holly hedge in his garden at Sayes Court, four hundred feet in length, five feet in diameter, and nine feet high; and when the Court was let to the Czar Peter, during his visit to the Deptford dockyard, that barbarian drove his wheel-barrow through it, and so injured the hedge that Evelyn claimed damages, and received one hundred and fifty pounds in compensation.

Another charming feature of the old garden – and one that was costly to execute – was the terrace. The slope of the hillside was taken in hand and was cut away, so as to produce a level lawn with a level, horizontal terrace-walk above it, and perhaps, where the slope admitted of it, a second and superior terrace. These terrace walls gave shelter, and as walks were always dry, the drainage from them being rapid. Trees, shrubs, flowers planted on them throve; there was no stagnation of water about their roots, and the sun, striking against the wall that enclosed the earth for their roots, made it warm, cherishing to the plants, as a hot bottle is a comfort to you who suffer from cold feet in your bed.

Nowhere have I seen roses so revel, go mad with delight and gratitude as in these terrace gardens. The rose is peculiarly averse to wet feet. See how the wild rose thrives in the clay-banked-up hedge! – a hedge that seems to have no moisture in it, the earth of which crumbles between the finger and thumb like snuff.

Then, again, the rose hates wind, and the terrace wall serves as a screen to it against its enemy. And – for human roses!

Last summer I attended a garden-party at an ancient country house with an old-fashioned garden. From the lawn in front of the porch a flight of granite steps led to a terrace nine feet above the lawn. This terrace was planted with venerable yew-trees, under which were little tables spread with fruit and cool drinks, and cakes. A second flight of steps gave access to a second terrace some twelve or fourteen feet higher, planted with flowers, and backed to the north by a lofty garden wall.

I do not think that, off the stage, I have seen any effect more beautiful than that of the young girls in their bright and many-tinted summer dresses, flitting about; some under the shade of the yews on terrace number one, some looking at the flowers a stage higher, on terrace number two, and some ascending and others descending the broad flight of steps that led to these terraces, like the angels in Jacob's vision.

The walls supporting the terraces served another purpose than that of sustaining the roots of trees and flowers on the stages; as rain fell on the terraces, it exuded between the joints of the stones and nourished a fairy world of lichen, moss, and ferns. This was the wall shaded by the yews. The other was hugged and laughed over by roses, honeysuckle, and wisteria.

We have got almost no gardens left in England in their primitive condition, only the wreckage of their beauty. But, as the old woman said who sniffed the empty amphora of old Falernian wine, "If what remains be so good, what must you have been when full!"

Now let us see what Horace Walpole tells us of the devastation of these beautiful old gardens. "No succeeding generation," he says, "in an opulent and luxurious country contents itself with the perfection established by its ancestors; more perfect perfection was still sought, and improvements had gone on, till London and Wise had stocked all our gardens with giants, animals, monsters, coats of arms and mottoes, in yew, box, and holly. Bridgman, the next fashionable designer of gardens, was far more chaste – he banished verdant sculpture, and did not even revert to the square precision of the foregoing age. He enlarged his plans, disdained to make every division tally to its opposite, and though he still adhered much to straight walks with high-clipped hedges, they were only his great lines; the rest he diversified by wilderness, and with loose groves of oak, though still within surrounding hedges. As his reformation gained footing, he ventured to introduce cultivated fields and even morsels of forest appearance, by the sides of those endless and tiresome walks.

"But the capital stroke, the leading step to all that has followed," – I shiver as I write these words, – "was the destruction of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fosses – an attempt then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them Ha! Ha's! to express their surprise at finding a sudden and unperceived check to their walk. No sooner was this simple enchantment made, than levelling, mowing, and rolling followed. The contiguous ground of the park without the sunk fence was to be harmonized with the lawn within; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its prim regularity, that it might assort with the wilder country without. At that moment appeared Kent, painter enough to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of imperfect essays."

The man Kent deserved the gallows much more than many who have been hung. No one who pretended to be in fashion dared to maintain a hedge or a wall. Down went the walls, and the beautiful roses bent their heads and died; the great yew hedges were stubbed up, and the delicate children and feeble old gentlemen who had basked under the lea, also, like the roses, stooped to earth and died. All the shelter, sweetness, sun, restfulness went away. These hedges had taken a century and more to grow, they were levelled without compunction, never perhaps again to reappear.[5]

No doubt there was folly in our forefathers in trimming yews into fantastical shapes; but Kent and his followers were as extravagant in their way. Kent actually planted dead trees in lawns and parks, to give a greater air of reality to the scene. Where he was allowed he cut down, or mutilated avenues, because unnatural; but just as unnatural were his absurd vistas, dug through woods so that the eye might reach a pagoda, an obelisk, or a temple at the end.

A traveller in France in 1788, on the eve of the Revolution, gives an account of the garden of Ermenonville, laid out by M. de Girardin on the English system. "He has succeeded better in closely imitating the steps of nature than any spot I have ever seen; nothing seems laboured, nothing artificial. The ground is irregular, and the ornaments rude, though the latter approach to too great an excess. I can see no reason, if ornaments are to be made use of in such places as these (which in itself is a deviation from nature), why they should not be handsome. To see a miserable obelisk built of brick, and resembling more a chimney than a monument, is carrying the refinement of wildness to too high a pitch. If they are designed to be rude and natural, they may at the same time be grotesque and elegant. Winding along a lovely walk, through the bosom of a young wood, a gentle stream meandering by its side, we reached a charming and retired spot. A large space here opens, shaded by the thick branches of the trees, which just leave room for a softened light to insinuate itself, and for the zephyrs to breathe through; over interrupting rocks and heaps of pebbles, the water dashes along with a noise grateful and composing. Here an altar is erected, sacred to Reverie; on a rock that overhangs the stream are inscribed some pleasing lines. Hence through a varied and highly pleasing path we continued our route along the grove, meeting with different inscriptions. From thence we ascended the forest, and traversing a path rugged and grotesque, were presented with many interesting and pleasing views. Arriving on the plain, in the bosom of a wood, we reached an extended area, in the midst of which stood a large oak, and at the end an edifice."[6]

I had written thus far, when last night there came to see me an old village singer of nigh on eighty years, always to me a welcome guest. I seated him by the fireside on a settle, and we fell to talking about gardens, when he said, "I reckon, your honour, I know a rare old-fashioned song about flowers and gardings, and them like. If your honour 'ud plase to hear me, I'll zing 'n."

Then he struck up the following quaint ballad, to an air certainly two hundred years old —

"IN A GARDEN SWEET." Arranged by F. W. Bussell, Esq., M.A[Listen] [PDF] [MusicXML]Two lovers in a garden sweetWere walking side by side,I heard how he the maid addressed,I heard how she replied.The garden it was very great,With box trees in a row;And up and down the gravell'd walkThese lovers fond did go."Said he, 'I prithee fix the dayWhereon we shall be wed.'Said she, 'Thou hast a wanton mind,I like thee not,' she said.'For now you look at brown Nancy,And dark eyes pleasure you;But next declare you like the fairJulian with eyes of blue.'"'O pretty maid, in garden sweet,Are flowers in each parterre,I turn and gaze with fond amazeAt all – for all are fair.But one I find – best to my mind,Of all I choose but one;I stoop and gather that choice flower,And wear that flower alone.'"

CHAPTER V

THE COUNTRY PARSON

OF NO class of men can it be more truly said that the good they do dies with them, and that the evil lives – in the memory of men – than the country parson. Of the thousands of old rectors and vicars of past generations, how they have all slipped out of the memory of men, have left no tradition whatever behind them, if they were good! but the few bad ones did so impress themselves on their generation, that the stories of their misconduct have been handed on, and are not forgotten in a century.

In the floor of my own parish church, in the chancel, is a tombstone to a former incumbent. The name and the date have been ground away by the heels of the school-children who sit over it, but thus much of the inscription remains —

"… The Psalmists man of yeares hee lived a score,Tended his flocke allone; theire ofspring did restoreBy Water into life of Grace; at font and grave,He served God devout: and strivd men's soules to save.He fedd the poore, lov'd all, and did by Pattern showe,As pastor to his Flocke, ye way that they shoulde go."

Not less effaced than the name is all tradition of the man whose monument proclaims his virtues. Now, I take it, for this very reason the tombstone bears true testimony. If it had told lies, every one would have known about it, and related this fact to their children; would have told anecdotes of the parson who was so unworthy, but concerning whose virtues his stone made such boast. That our old country parsons were not, as a rule, a disreputable, drinking, neglectful set of men I believe, because so few traditions of their misconduct remain.

There was a clever, pleasant book published at the beginning of this century, entitled, The Velvet Cushion. It was written by the Rev. J. W. Cunningham, Vicar of Harrow. The seventh edition, from which I quote, appeared in 1815. This book professes to tell the experiences of a pulpit cushion from pre-Reformation days to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Here is what the Cushion says – "Sir, you will be anxious, I am sure, to hear the history of some of your predecessors in the living; and it is my intention to gratify you. I think it right, however, to observe, that of a large proportion of them no very interesting records remain. Mankind are much alike, and a little country village is not likely to call out their peculiarities. Some few were mere profligates, whose memory I do not wish to perpetuate." – But it is precisely these, and only these, that the less charitable memory of man does perpetuate. – "Many of them were persons of decent, cold, correct manners, varying slightly, perhaps, in the measure of their zeal, their doctrinal exactness, their benevolence, their industry, their talents – but, in general, of that neutral class which rarely affords materials for history, or subjects of instruction. They were men of that species who are too apt to spring up in the bosom of old and prosperous establishments, whose highest praise is, that they do no harm."

No one can accuse this description as being coloured too high. It is, if I may judge by early recollections, applicable to those who occupied the parsonages twenty and thirty years later.

In my own parish in which I was reared, Romaine, one of the most brilliant luminaries of the evangelical revival, acted as curate for a while, but not the smallest trace of any tradition of his goodness, his eloquence, his zeal did I discover among the villagers. At the very time that Romaine was in this parish, there was a curate in an adjoining one who was over-fond of the bottle, and was picked up out of the ditch on more than one occasion. Neither his name nor his delinquencies are forgotten to this day.

I take it that the state in which the parish registers have been kept are a fair test as to what sort of parsons there were. Now certainly they were very neglectfully kept at the Restoration and for a short while afterwards. That is not to be wondered at. During the Commonwealth they had been taken from the parsons and committed to lay-registrars in the several parishes, who certainly kept them badly, and at the Restoration they were not at once and always reclaimed, but continued to be kept by the clerk, who stepped into the place of the registrar appointed by the Commonwealth. But in the much-maligned Hanoverian period they were carefully kept by the clergy, and as a rule neatly entered. If such an indication be worth anything, it shows that the country parsons did take pains to discharge at least one of their duties. He that is faithful in a small matter, is faithful also, we may conclude, in that which is great.

I presume that Dr. Syntax may be regarded as typical of the class, and Combe says of him —

"Of Church-preferment he had none;Nay, all his hope of that was gone:He felt that he content must beWith drudging in a curacy.Indeed, on ev'ry Sabbath-day,Through eight long miles he took his way,To preach, to grumble, and to pray;To cheer the good, to warn the sinner,And, if he got it, – eat a dinner:To bury these, to christen those,And marry such fond folks as choseTo change the tenor of their life,And risk the matrimonial strife.Thus were his weekly journeys made,'Neath summer suns and wintry shade;And all his gains, it did appear,Were only thirty pounds a-year."

And when he dies —

"The village wept, the hamlets roundCrowded the consecrated ground;And waited there to see the endOf Pastor, Teacher, Father, Friend."

What a charming picture does Fielding draw in his Joseph Andrews of Mr. Abraham Adams, the parson – gentle, guileless, learned, and very poor. And Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield – was ever a purer, sweeter type of man delineated? The description given of his parsonage and mode of life is valuable, and must be quoted; for it shows what a change has come over the parsonage and the parson's manner of intercourse with his parishioners since Goldsmith's time.

"Our little habitation was situated at the foot of a sloping hill, sheltered with a beautiful underwood behind, and prattling river before; on one side a meadow, on the other a green. My farm consisted of about twenty acres of excellent land, having given an hundred pounds for my predecessor's good-will… My house consisted of but one story, and was covered with thatch, which gave it an air of great snugness; the walls on the inside were nicely whitewashed, and my daughters undertook to adorn them with pictures of their own designing. Though the same room served us for parlour and kitchen, that only made it warmer. Besides, as it was kept with the utmost neatness, the dishes, plates, and coppers being well scoured, and all disposed in bright rows on the shelves, the eye was agreeably relieved, and did not want richer furniture. There were three other apartments – one for my wife and me, another for our two daughters, within our own, and the third, with two beds for the rest of the children."

Our old parsonage houses precisely resembled this description, but hardly any remain. They have given way for more pretentious houses; and with the grander houses the habits and requirements of the parsons have grown.

"Nor were we without guests; sometimes Farmer Flamborough, and often the blind piper, would pay us a visit, and taste our gooseberry wine. These harmless people had several ways of being good company; for while one played, the other would sing some soothing ballad —Johnny Armstrong's Last Good Night, or The Cruelty of Barbara Allen."

Crabbe, himself a clergyman, does not give the most favourable sketch of the village parsons; and yet his country vicar is a man of perfect blamelessness.

"Our Priest was cheerful, and in season gay;His frequent visits seldom fail'd to please;Easy himself, he sought his neighbour's ease.* * * * * *Simple he was, and loved the simple truth,Yet had some useful cunning from his youth;A cunning never to dishonour lent,And rather for defence than conquest meant;'Twas fear of power, with some desire to rise,But not enough to make him enemies;He ever aim'd to please; and to offendWas ever cautious; for he sought a friend.Fiddling and fishing were his arts: at timesHe alter'd sermons, and he aim'd at rhymes;And his fair friends, not yet intent on cards,Oft he amused with riddles and charades.Mild were his doctrines, and not one discourseBut gain'd in softness what it lost in force:Kind his opinions; he would not receiveAn ill report, nor evil act believe.* * * * * *Though mild benevolence our Priest possess'd,'Twas but by wishes or by words expressed.Circles in water, as they wider flow,The less conspicuous in their progress grow,And when, at last, they touch upon the shore,Distinction ceases, and they're viewed no more.His love, like the last circle, all embraced,But with effect that never could be traced.Now rests our Vicar. – They who knew him bestProclaim his life t' have been entirely – rest.The rich approved, – of them in awe he stood;The poor admired, – they all believed him good;The old and serious of his habits spoke;The frank and youthful loved his pleasant joke;Mothers approved a safe contented guest,And daughters one who backed each small request;In him his flock found nothing to condemn;Him sectaries liked, – he never troubled them:No trifles fail'd his yielding mind to please,And all his passions sunk in early ease;Nor one so old has left this world of sin,More like the being that he entered in."

Clever, true, and cutting. Crabbe knew the class, its excellences and its weaknesses. We are considering the excellences now; we will recur to the weaknesses later.

Fielding does, in his Joseph Andrews, give us a study of another type of parson – Trulliber, "whom Adams found stript into his waistcoat, with an apron on, and a pail in his hands, just come from serving his hogs; for Mr. Trulliber was a parson on Sundays, but all the other six might be more properly called a farmer. He occupied a small piece of land of his own, besides which he rented a considerable deal more. His wife milked his cows, managed his dairy, and followed the market with butter and eggs. The hogs fell chiefly to his care, which he carefully waited on at home, and attended to fairs; on which occasion he was liable to many jokes, his own size being with much ale rendered little inferior to that of the beasts he sold… His voice was loud and hoarse, and his accent extremely broad. To complete the whole, he had a stateliness in his gait when he walked, not unlike of a goose, only he stalked slower."

But this parson was only a boor, he was not disorderly.

I have an old coachman, near eighty, who has been in the family since he was a boy, and of whom I get many stories of how the world went at the beginning of this century. Said he to me one day, "My old uncle he lived in Maristowe; he was bedridden nigh on twenty years, and in all those years Parson Teasdale didn't miss coming to see and read and pray with him every day, Sunday and week-day alike."

We make much fuss about parochial visiting now, but is there any visiting like that? In The Velvet Cushion, a dialogue between the Vicar and his wife is chronicled.

"'I am not sure,' said the Vicar, 'that it is not a presumptuous reliance upon the goodness of God, – an abuse of the doctrine of Divine mercy, that has kept me at home to-day, when I should have gone to visit old Dame Wilkins. An' so now, my dear, let us go to Mary Wilkins' directly.' Her bonnet was soon on, and they hobbled down the village almost as fast as if their house had been on fire. Mary Wilkins was a poor good woman, to whom the Vicar's visit three times a week had become almost one of the necessaries of life. It was now two hours beyond the time he usually came; and had she been awake, she would really have been pained by the delay. But, happily, she had fallen into a profound sleep, and when he put his foot on the threshold, and in his old-fashioned way said, 'Peace be with you,' she was just awaking. This comforted our good man, and, as he well knew where all comfort comes from, he thanked God in his heart even for this."

The old parsons lived more on the social level of the farmers and yeomen than of the squires, but they were in many cases men of very considerable culture. It was not, however, those who were the best scholars who were the best parsons. I will give presently my reminiscences of one of the last of the old scholar-parsons. Unfortunately, scholarship is on the decline, at all events among those who occupy country parsonages.

It has been often charged against the old parsons, that they preached mere morality, and above the heads of their people, interlarding their sermons with quotations in Greek and Latin. As for preaching morality – I do not care to apologize for their doing that. Nothing better can be preached; nothing was more necessary to be preached in the last century. Judging by the registers of baptisms in parishes, at no time was there so much immorality among village people than at that period when our country parsons were charged with preaching morality – excepting always the present. Those who made this a matter of accusation, meant that the Gospel, as they called their peculiar view of religion, was not insisted on; forgetting all the while that the Gospel is pretty well stuffed with exhortations to morality, and above all, that model for all sermons, the one preached on the Mount. But I do not believe that mere morality, apart from Christian faith, was preached. There is a pretty passage in The Velvet Cushion descriptive of a sermon at the beginning of this century, which I cannot take to be a description of something quite extraordinary and out of the way.