by R S Surtees
Then those valuable documents called leases — so binding on the landlord, were found to be wholly inoperative on the tenants, who threw up their farms as if there were no such things in existence.
If the Major wouldn’t take their givings up, why then he might just do his “warst;” meanwhile, of course, they would “do their warst,” by the land. With those who had nothing (farming and beer-shop keeping being about the only trades a man can start with upon nothing), of course, it was of no use persisting, but the awkward part of the thing was, that this probing of pockets showed that in too many cases the reputed honesty of the British farmer was also mere fiction; for some who were thought to be well off, now declared that their capital was their aunt’s, or their uncle’s, or their grandmother’s, or some one else’s, so that the two classes, the have-somethings, and the have-nothings, were reduced to a level. This sort of thing went on throughout the country, and landlords who could not face the difficulty by taking their estates in hand, had to submit to very serious reductions of rent, and rent once got down, is very difficult to get up again, especially in countries where they value by the rate-book, or where a traditionary legend attaches to land of the lowest rent it has ever been let for.
Our Major was sorely dispirited, and each market-day, as he returned from Mr. Bullrush’s with worse and worse news than before, he pondered o’er his misfortunes, fearing that he would have to give up his hounds and his horses, withdraw his daughters from Miss Featherey’s, and go to Boulogne, and as he contemplated the airy outline of their newly-erected rural palace of a workhouse, he said it was lucky they had built it, for he thought they would all very soon be in it. Certainly, things got to their worst in the farming way, before they began to mend, and such land as the Major’s — good, but “salivated with wet,” as the cabman said of his coat — was scarcely to be let at any price.
In these go-a-head days of farming, when the enterprising sons of trade are fast obliterating the traces of the heavy-heel’d order of easy-minded Hodges who,
— — “held their farms and lived content
While one year paid another’s rent,”
without ever making any attempt at improvement, it may be amusing to record the business-like offer of some of those indolent worthies who would bid for a pig in a poke. Thus it runs: — It should have been dated April 1, instead of 21: —
TO MAJOR YAMMERTON.
“Onard Sir,
“Hobnail Hill, April 21.
“Wheas We have considered we shall give you for Bonnyrig’s farme the som £100 25 puns upon condishinds per year if you should think it to little we may perhaps advance a little as we have not looked her carefully over her and for character Mr. Sowerby will give you every information as we are the third giniration that’s been under the Sowerbys.
“Yours sincerely,
“Henerey Brown,
“Homfray Brown — Co.
“If you want anye otes I could sell you fifteen bowels of verye fine ones.”
Now the “som £100 25 puns” being less than half what the Major’s grandfather used to get for the farm: — viz. “£200 63 puns,” — our Major was considerably perplexed; and as “Henerey and Homfray”’s offer was but a sample of the whole, it became a question between Boulogne and Bastile, as those once unpopular edifices, the workhouses, were then called. And here we may observe, that there is nothing perhaps, either so manageable or so unmanageable as land — nothing easier to keep right than land in good order, and nothing more difficult to get by the head, and stop, than land that has run wild; and it may be laid down as an infallible rule, that the man who has no taste for land or horses should have nothing to do with either. He should put his money in the funds, and rail or steam when he has occasion to travel. He will be far richer, far fatter, and fill the bay window of his club far better, than by undergoing the grinding of farmers and the tyranny of grooms. Land, like horses, when once in condition is easily kept so, but once let either go down, and the owner becomes a prey to the scratchers and the copers.
If, however, a man likes a little occupation better than the eternal gossip, and “who’s that?” of the clubs, and prefers a smiling improving landscape to a barren retrograding scene, he will find no pleasanter, healthier, or more interesting occupation than improving his property. And a happy thing it was for this kingdom, that Prince Albert who has done so much to refine and elevate mankind, should have included farming in the list of his amusements, — bringing the before despised pursuit into favour and fashion, so that now instead of land remaining a prey to the “Henerey Browns & Co.” of life, we find gentlemen advertising for farms in all directions, generally stipulating that they are to be on the line of one or other of the once derided railways.
But we are getting in advance of the times with our Major, whom we left in the slough of despond, consequent on the coming down of his rents. Just when things were at their worst, the first sensible sunbeam of simplicity that ever shone upon land, appeared in the shape of the practical, easy-working Drainage Act, an act that has advanced agriculture more than all previous inventions and legislation put together. But our gallant friend had his difficulties to contend with even here.
Mr. Bullrush was opposed to it. He was fat and didn’t like trouble, so he doubted the capacity of such a pocket companion as a pipe to carry off the superfluous water, then he doubted the ability of the water to get into the pipe at such a depth, above all he doubted the ability of the tenants to pay drainage interests. “How could they if they couldn’t pay their rents?” Of course, the tenants adopted this view of the matter, and were all opposed to making what they called “experiences,” at their own expense; so upon the whole, Mr. Bullrush advised the Major to have nothing to do with it. It being, however, a case of necessity with the Major, he disregarded Mr. Bullrush’s advice which led to a separation, and being now a free agent, he went boldly at the government loan, and soon scared all the snipes and half the tenants off his estate. The water poured off in torrents; the plump juicy rushes got the jaundice, and Mossington bog, over which the Major used to have to scuttle on foot after his “haryers,” became sound enough to carry a horse. Then as Mr. Bullrush rode by and saw each dreary swamp become sound ground, he hugged himself with the sloven’s consolation that it “wouldn’t p-a-a-y.” Pay, however, it did, for our Major next went and got some stout horses, and the right sort of implements of agriculture, and soon proved the truth of the old adage, that it is better to follow a sloven than a scientific farmer. He worked his land well, cleaned it well, and manured it well; in which three simple operations consists the whole science of husbandry, and instead of growing turnips for pickling, as his predecessors seemed to do, he got great healthy Swedes that loomed as large as his now fashionable daughter’s dresses. He grew as many “bowels” of oats upon one acre of land as any previous tenant had done upon three. So altogether, our Major throve, and instead of going to Boulogne, he presently set up the Cockaded Coach in which we saw him arrive at Tantivy Castle. Not that he went to a coachmaker’s and said, “Build me a roomy family coach regardless of expense,” but, finding that he couldn’t get an inside seat along with the thirty-six yard dresses in the old chariot, he dropped in at the sale of the late Squire Trefoil’s effects, who had given some such order, and, under pretence of buying a shower-bath, succeeded in getting a capital large coach on its first wheels for ten pounds, — scarcely the value of the pole.
As a contrast to Henerey Brown and Co.’s business-like offer for the farm, and in illustration of the difference between buying and selling, we append the verbose estimate of this ponderous affair. Thus it runs —
HENRY TREFOIL, ESQ.
To CHALKER AND CHARGER COACHMAKERS, BY APPOINTMENT, TO THE EMPEROR OF CHINA, Emperor of Morocco, the King of Oude, the King of the Cannibal Islands, &c., &c., &c., &c.
Long Acre, London.
(Followed by all the crowns, arms, orders, flourish, and flannel, peculiar to aristocratic tradesmen.)
&nb
sp; Three hundred and ninety pounds! And to think that the whole should come to be sold for ten sovereigns. Oh, what a falling off was there, my coachmakers! Surely the King of the Cannibal Islands could never afford to pay such prices as those! Verily, Sir Robert Peel was right when he said that there was no class of tradespeople whose bills wanted reforming so much as coachmakers. What ridiculous price they make wood and iron assume, and what absurd offers they make when you go to them to sell!
CHAPTER XVI. THE MAJOR’S MENAGE.
AND first about the “haryers!”
“Five-and-thirty years master of haryers without a subscription!”
This, we think, is rather an exaggeration, both as regards time and money, unless the Major reckons an undivide d moiety he had in an old lady-hound called “Lavender” along with the village blacksmith of Billinghurst when he was at school. If he so calculates, then he would be right as to time, but wrong as to money, for the blacksmith paid his share of the tax, and found the greater part of the food. For thirty years, we need hardly tell the reader of sporting literature, that the Major had been a master of harriers — for well has he blown the horn of their celebrity during the whole of that long period — never were such harriers for finding jack hares, and pushing them through parishes innumerable, making them take rivers, and run as straight as railways, putting the costly performances of the foxhounds altogether to the blush. Ten miles from point to point, and generally without a turn, is the usual style of thing, the last run with this distinguished pack being always unsurpassed by any previous performance. Season after season has the sporting world been startled with these surprising announcements, until red-coated men, tired of blanks and ringing foxes, have almost said, “Dash my buttons, if I won’t shut up shop here and go and hunt with these tremendous harriers,” while other currant-jelly gentlemen, whose hares dance the fandango before their plodding pack, have sighed for some of these wonderful “Jacks” that never make a curve, or some of the astonishing hounds that have such a knack at making them fly.
Well, but the reader will, perhaps, say it’s the blood that does it — the Major has an unrivalled, unequalled strain of harrier blood that nobody else can procure. Nothing of the sort! Nothing of the sort! The Major’s blood is just anything he can get. He never misses a chance of selling either a single hound or a pack, and has emptied his kennel over and over again. But then he always knows where to lay hands on more; and as soon as ever the new hounds cross his threshold they become the very “best in the world” — better than any he ever had before. They then figure upon paper, just as if it was a continuous pack; and the field being under pretty good command, and, moreover, implicated in the honour of their performances, the thing goes on smoothly and well, and few are any the wiser. There is nothing so popular as a little fuss and excitement, in which every man may take his share, and this it is that makes scratch packs so celebrated. Their followers see nothing but their perfections. They are
“To their faults a little blind,
And to their virtues ever kind.”
At the period of which we are writing, the Major’s pack was rather better than usual, being composed of the pick of three packs,— “cries of dogs” rather — viz., the Corkycove harriers, kept by the shoemakers of Waxley; the Bog-trotter harriers (four couple), kept by some moor-edge miners; the Dribbleford dogs, upon whom nobody would pay the tax; and of some two or three couple of incurables, that had been consigned from different kennels on condition of the Major returning the hampers in which they came.
The Major was open to general consignments in the canine line — Hounds, Pointers, Setters, Terriers, &c. — not being of George the Third’s way of thinking, who used to denounce all “presents that eat.” He would take anything; anything, at least, except a Greyhound, an animal that he held in mortal abhorrence. What he liked best was to get a Lurcher, for which he soon found a place under a pear-tree.
The Major’s huntsman, old Solomon, was coachman, shepherd, groom, and gamekeeper, as well as huntsman, and was the cockaded gentleman who drove the ark on the occasion of our introduction. In addition to all this, he waited at table on grand occasions, and did a little fishing, hay-making, and gardening in the summer. He was one of the old-fashioned breed of servants, now nearly extinct, who passed their lives in one family and turned their hands to whatever was wanted. The Major, whose maxim was not to keep any cats that didn’t catch mice, knowing full well that all gentlemen’s servants can do double the work of their places, provided they only get paid for it, resolved, that it was cheaper to pay one man the wages of one-and-a-half to do the work of two men, than to keep two men to do the same quantity; consequently, there was very little hissing at bits and curb-chains in the Major’s establishment, the hard work of other places being the light work, or no work at all, of his. Solomon was the beau idéal of a harrier huntsman, being, as the French say, d’un certain age, quiet, patient, and a pusillanimous rider.
Now about the subscription.
It is true that the Major did not take a subscription in the common acceptation of the term, but he took assistance in various ways, such as a few days ploughing from one man, a few “bowels” of seed-wheat from another, a few “bowels” of seed-oats from a third, a lamb from a fourth, a pig from a fifth, added to which, he had all the hounds walked during the summer, so that his actual expenses were very little more than the tax. This he jockeyed by only returning about two-thirds the number of hounds he kept; and as twelve couple were his hunting maximum, his taxing minimum would be about eight — eight couple — or sixteen hounds, at twelve shillings a-piece, is nine pound twelve, for which sum he made more noise in the papers than the Quorn, the Belvoir, and the Cottesmore all put together. Indeed the old adage of “great cry and little wool,” applies to packs as well as flocks, for we never see hounds making a great “to-do” in the papers without suspecting that they are either good for nothing, or that the fortunate owner wants to sell them.
With regard to horses, the Major, like many people, had but one sort — the best in England — though they were divided into two classes, viz., hunters and draught horses. Hacks or carriage horses he utterly eschewed. Horses must either hunt or plough with him; nor was he above putting his hunters into the harrows occasionally. Hence he always had a pair of efficient horses for his carriage when he wanted them, instead of animals that were fit to jump out of their skins at starting, and ready to slip through them on coming home.
Clothing he utterly repudiated for carriage horses, alleging, that people never get any work out of them after they are once clothed.
The hunters were mostly sedate, elderly animals, horses that had got through the “morning of life” with the foxhounds, and came to the harriers in preference to harness. The Major was always a buyer or an exchanger, or a mixer of both, and would generally “advance a little” on the neighbouring job-master’s prices. Then having got them, he recruited the veterans by care and crushed corn, which, with cutting their tails, so altered them, that sometimes their late groom scarcely knew them again.
Certainly, if the animals could have spoken, they would have expressed their surprise at the different language the Major held as a buyer and as a seller; as a buyer, when like Gil Blas’ mule, he made them out to be all faults, as a seller when they suddenly seemed to become paragons of perfection. He was always ready for a deal, and would accommodate matters to people’s convenience — take part cash, part corn, part hay, part anything, for he was a most miscellaneous barterer, and his stable loft was like a Marine Store-dealer’s shop. Though always boasting that his little white hands were not “soiled with trade,” he would traffic in anything (on the sly) by which he thought he could turn a penny. His last effort in the buying way had nearly got him into the County Court, as the following correspondence will show, as also how differently two people can view the same thing.
Being in town, with wheat at 80s. and barley and oats in proportion, and consequently more plethoric in the pocket than usual, h
e happened to stray into a certain great furniture mart where two chairs struck him as being cheap. They were standing together, and one of them was thus ticketed:
No. 8205.
2 Elizabethan chairs.
India Japanned.
43 s.
The Major took a good stare at them, never having seen any before. Well, he thought they could not be dear at that; little more than a guinea each. Get them home for fifty shillings, say There was a deal of gold, and lacker, and varnish about them. Coloured bunches of flowers, inlaid with mother of pearl, Chinese temples, with “insolent pig-tailed barbarians,” in pink silk jackets, with baggy blue trowsers, and gig whips in their hands, looking after the purple ducks on the pea-grcen lake — all very elegant.
He’d have them, dashed if he wouldn’t! Would try and swap them for Mrs. Rocket Larkspur’s Croydon basket-carriage that the girls wanted. Just the things to tickle her fancy. So he went into the office and gave his card most consequentially, with a reference to Pannell, the sadler in Spur Street, Leicestor-square, desiring that the chairs might be most carefully packed and forwarded to him by the goods train with an invoice by post.
When the invoice came, behold! the 43s. had changed into 86s.
“Hilloa!” exclaimed the astonished Major. This won’t do! 86s. is twice 43s.; and he wrote off to say they had made a mistake. This brought the secretary of the concern, Mr. Badbill, on to the scene. He replied beneath a copious shower of arms, orders, flourish, and flannel, that the mistake was the Major’s — that they, “never marked their goods in pairs,” to which the Major rejoined, that they had in this instance, as the ticket which he forwarded to Pannell for Badbill’s inspection showed, and that he must decline the chairs at double the price they were ticketed for.
