The Retrospect

by Ada Cambridge

"When he came to South R—— they had ague in almost every house from poverty and undrained land. The poor rates were ten shillings in the pound, with a large common and unlimited rights thereon.... He estimated the claying of this common at six pounds per acre. He was seven years at it, winter and summer, not always stopping at harvest time, for in this district a pit fills with water as soon as (and often before) it is finished, not again to be reworked, constant pumping being required. Large quantities of faggots had often to be placed to bear the horses and carts in getting out of the pits. Three hundred and four hundred loads per acre were put on the land. The extent of clay pits was estimated by Mr P. of N——, when apportioning the tithe rent charge, at ten acres.... He made two ears of corn grow where only one had grown before."

Then, in 1822, there was "great depression in agriculture, and he took another farm, almost on his own terms, as tenant, and again clayed and underdrained ... it was said that no tenant-farmer at that time employed so many hands or spent so much on the same quantity of land as he did ... grass was as much cared for as arable." And on a certain field where he "harrowed in oats as a boy, he planted the land twice with fir-trees, twice cut them down and measured them up, and twice sold them." He wrote an essay for the Royal Agricultural Society "On the Rearing and Maintaining of Fences," which was printed in their journal. All his own fences (hedges) were "clipped twice in the year, at a cost of ten shillings per mile." I have seen the men doing it—they seemed always doing it—and those hedges were as smoothly rounded and trim as those of the neatest garden.

"The stitch in time was his motto," says the chronicler. The loss of a rail was replaced directly, or a tile from a building. It was so natural to him that he did not hesitate to point it out on his neighbour's premises, as when he saw a pig without a ring in its nose. A road-scraper was always on the road leading to the house and farmyard, and everyone was expected to use it, or would be reminded to do so, removing dirt on to the grass. All were trained to put farm implements under cover and to fix waggon and cart shafts up by a chain. I can answer for two of his descendants—the remnant of his youngest son's family—that they have inherited this instinct for neatness and order, although in one case circumstances rather hamper its free play. My father himself, like most of the males of my intimate acquaintance, was an untidy man and a bad domestic economist.

Two other marked traits of the grandfather's character are noted by his biographer—a great love of music and a great love of animals. It is mentioned that the guard of the mail-coach always began to play on his bugle when approaching the house, and the tune was "The Old English Gentleman" when passing it. "His kindness to animals was such that he had them often given to him when aged, from its being known that he never sold an old horse, and so they were sure to end their days with him." And "Shortly before his death, he asked for the curtains to be drawn aside that he might have a last look at the scene of his old labours, and he said, 'There are my sheep, pretty creatures!'"

It is evident that in his later life he was a distinguished county man. He was for many years agent for the trustees of large fen properties, and the agencies of some of the most important estates in Norfolk were offered him after he had retired from such duties. When the W—— property, which had been his first charge, was sold again, "The measuring up, the valuation of the timber, and the price to be fixed on the whole estate, was left to his judgment." I have read some of his business letters, and they seemed to me models of what such should be. At Agricultural Society dinners, and other public functions, honour was paid him in complimentary speeches. "You must not consider what Mr C.'s farming is now, with all the improvements that have taken place of late, but as I remember him and his farm years ago, when no one but him clayed land, underdrained, or clipped hedges." And so on. In his eighty-second year he was presented by his friends with his portrait in oils, accompanied by the following address:—

"Dear Sir,—As a testimony of our esteem for the valuable services you have rendered to Agriculture during a residence of upwards of eighty years in the same locality, in converting an unproductive waste into a fertile country, and especially as the originator of the beneficial system of deep underdraining, claying and the management of fences, now generally followed—as a benefactor of the labourer, a kind neighbour and a sincere friend—we respectfully beg to present the accompanying Portrait, painted by Ambrosini Jerome, Esqr., portrait painter to her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent, as an Heirloom to your family, with an assurance that they will ever regard it as a noble example of a parent who has raised himself by his science, diligence and integrity from a humble position to affluence and respectability and honour, and with our sincere wishes that you may long live to enjoy the merited reward of an active, useful and well-spent life. We are," etc.

And the names of leading Norfolk are appended.

I saw that portrait, still hanging in its old place, in the dining-room where M. and I had tea with the great-grandson and his family (our coachman, quite at home in the house that had sheltered generations of his family also, had put up his carriage and was enjoying himself in the kitchen), and I noted the same fault that had struck us when it was new—the common fault of painted portraits—a lack of the virile force that gave character to his face even in extreme old age. Otherwise it was a good likeness. He holds the appropriate swath of ripe wheat in one wrinkled hand, the heavy ears supported on the other—a nobler emblem than any Heralds' College could have given him.

The great-grandson did not know, until I (who had just found it out) told him, that the picture was an heirloom and no property of his, he being but the son of a younger granddaughter. He could not tell me how it came to be still in its old place, but I could tell him. It really belongs to America. Years ago—about ten or thereabouts—I had a letter from a cousin who had emigrated to the States in his youth, recalling himself to my memory for the first time since we were children together, meeting at the grandfather's armchair at R—— on Sunday afternoons. I could not quite identify him, but my public position as a writer had supplied him with a clue to me. In this letter, which contained photographs of his home and children and details of his American life, he mentioned that he was now the head of the family and legal owner of the grandfather's portrait. It had come to him since he had emigrated, and he had never gone back, and never expected to go back; but he had an idea that I was going back, and he formally made over the picture to me. He asked me to find it, and take it, and keep it. He seemed to have lost touch and knowledge of his English connections in the course of so many years, but to feel that he had found a tangible, or, at any rate, authentic representative of them in me. If I would accept the treasure, he would be sure that it was in safe keeping—or something to that effect. In writing back to him, I, of course, refused it. I told him I was far less likely to return to England than he was, and that in any case I was not in the "line of succession"; and I heard no more about it. A year or two later I received a newspaper from his family announcing his death; then I had a letter from his son. Did I know where the portrait was? Did I know this and that and the other about the family? I could see that this young American had been nursed on legends of country seats and ancestors of the romantic pattern, that his father in his new country had idealised the old, as I had, and, unlike me, had impressed his unconscious exaggerations upon the imaginations of his children. "I am now the head of the family," wrote the young man, as if we were in the Peerage. I had to reply to him that I did not know where the portrait was, that I did not know anything about the family in England, and that nothing seemed more unlikely than that I ever should.

Now here I was, at the fountain-head of knowledge, and there was the portrait, benignly—too benignly—looking down upon me from the wall.