Grain and Chaff from an English Manor

by Arthur Herbert Savory

The last line is a delightful bathos, adding immensely to the completeness of the catastrophe.

In spring the beech is the most beautiful of forest trees, putting forth individual horizontal sprays of tender green from the lower branches about the end of April as heralds of the later full glory of the tree. These increase day by day upwards in verdant clouds, until the whole unites into a complete bower of dense greenery. The beech is known as the "groaning tree," because the branches often cross each other, and where the tree is exposed to the wind sometimes groan as they rub together. The rubbing often causes a wound where one of the branches will eventually break off, or occasionally automatic grafting takes place, and they unite. In the Verderer's Hall at Lyndhurst specimens are to be seen which have crossed and joined a second time, so that a complete hollow oval, or irregular circle of the wood could be cut out of the branch.

Estates where extensive beech woods existed have been bought by speculative timber dealers, who shortly installed a gang of wood cutters and a steam saw, on which the timber was sawn into suitable pieces, to be afterwards turned on a lathe into chair legs and other domestic furniture, and very often finally dyed to represent mahogany. There are beeches in the New Forest which vie with the oak for premier place, measuring over 20 feet in circumference, and the mast together with the acorns affords abundant harvest, or "ovest," as it is called, for the commoners' pigs.

There was a curious saying in use by persons on the road to Pershore, when asked their destination. In a good plum year the reply was, "Pershore, where d'ye think?" And in a year of scarcity, "Pershore, God help us!" The same expressions were formerly current regarding Burley in the New Forest referring to the abundance or scarcity of beech-mast and acorns, called collectively "akermast."

When the nation had presented the Duke of Wellington, after the Battle of Waterloo, with Strathfieldsaye, an estate between Basingstoke and Reading, the Duke wishing to commemorate the event planted a number of beech trees as a lasting memorial, which were known as "the Waterloo beeches." Some years later, the eminent arboricultural author, John Loudon, writing on the subject of the relative ages and sizes of trees, wrote to the Duke for permission to view his Waterloo beeches. The Duke had never heard of Loudon, and his writing being somewhat illegible he deciphered the signature "J. Loudon" as "J. London" (the Bishop of London), and the word "beeches" as "breeches." "For what on earth can the Bishop want to see the breeches I wore at Waterloo?" said the Duke; but taking a charitable view of the matter he decided that the poor old Bishop must be getting irresponsible and replied that he was giving his valet instructions to show the Bishop the garments in question, whenever it suited him to inspect them. The Bishop was equally amazed, but took exactly the same view about the Duke as the latter had decided upon concerning the Bishop. No doubt the mystery was eventually cleared up, and Bishop and Duke must have both enjoyed the joke.

The shade of the beech is so dense that grass will not grow beneath it; it gradually kills even holly, which is comparatively flourishing under the oak. The beech woods in the Forest are thus quite free from undergrowth, and the noble trees with their smooth ash-coloured stems can be seen in perfection, giving a cathedral aisle effect, which is erroneously said to have suggested the massive columns and groined roofs of Gothic architecture.

"Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise."

There is, too, an unearthly effect at times to be seen beneath them, so exaggerated as to remind one of the stage setting of a pastoral play, with all the enhancing artificial contrivance of light and shade. It is to be seen only on a brilliantly sunny day, where the contour of the space around the stem and below the branches takes the form of an arched cavern, flooded by a single shaft of sunlight, piercing the foliage at one particular spot, lighting up the floor carpeted with last year's red-brown leaves, and emphasizing the gloom of the walls and roof. Imagination instantly supplies the players, for a more perfect setting for Rosalind and Celia, Orlando and the melancholy Jaques, it would be impossible to conceive. It is said that the ancient Greeks could see with their ears and hear with their eyes, a privilege doubtless granted to the nature lover in all ages. In the Forest some of the most ancient and remarkable trees have borne for generations descriptive names such as the King and Queen oaks at Boldrewood, and the Eagle oak in Knightwood. The communion between human and tree life is well illustrated by a passage from Thoreau's Walden: "I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines."

At Aldington a most valuable tree was the willow, or "withy," as it is called in Worcestershire, though in Hampshire the latter name is given to the Goat willow, or sallow ("sally," in Worcestershire), bearing the pretty blossoms known as palms, which in former times were worn by men and boys in country places on Palm Sunday. My brooks were bordered on both sides by pollard withies, the whole being divided into seven parts or annual cuts, so that, as they are lopped every seven years a cut came in for lopping each year. They were then well furnished with long and heavy poles, which were severed close to the head of the pollard with a sharp axe. When on the ground, the brushwood was cut off and tied into "kids" (faggots) for fire-lighting, the poles being made into hurdles or sold to the crate-makers in the potteries for crates in which to pack earthenware goods of all descriptions. The men employed at the lopping had to stand on the heads of the pollards, and it was sometimes quite an acrobatic feat to maintain their balance on a small swaying tree, or on one which overhung the water.

There was a local saying that "the withy tree would buy the horse, while the oak would only buy the halter," and I believe it to be perfectly true; for the uses of the withy are innumerable, and throughout its seven years' growth from one lopping to another there is always something useful to be had from it, with its final harvest of full-grown poles. One year after lopping the superfluous shoots are cut out and used or sold for "bonds" for tying up "kids" or the mouths of corn sacks. As the shoots grow stronger more can be taken—with ultimate benefit to the development of the full-grown poles—for use as rick pegs and "buckles" in thatching. The buckles are the wooden pins made of a small strip of withy, twisted at the centre so that it can be doubled in half like a hairpin, and used to fix the rods which secure the thatch by pressing the buckles firmly into it. In Hampshire these are called "spars," and they are sold in bundles containing a fixed number.