Considering how very much the fair days are overbalanced by the dirty, thick, dropping, misty weather of England, I think we take a too sunny aspect of her history: it has not been under the full-faced smiles of heaven that her battles, revolutions, executions, and pageants have held their august procession; the rain has wet many a May-day and many a harvesting, whose traditional color (through tender English verses) is gaudy with yellow sunshine. The revellers of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" would find a wet turf eight days out of ten to disport upon. We think of Bacon without an umbrella, and of Cromwell without a mackintosh; yet I suspect both of them carried these, or their equivalents, pretty constantly. Raleigh, indeed, threw his velvet cloak into the mud for the Virgin Queen to tread upon,—from which we infer a recent shower; but it is not often that an historical incident is so suggestive of the true state of the atmosphere.
History, however, does not mind the rain: agriculture must. More especially in any view of British agriculture, whether old or new, and in any estimate of its theories or progress, due consideration must be had for the generous dampness of the British atmosphere. To this cause is to be attributed primarily that wonderful velvety turf which is so unmatchable elsewhere; to the same cause, and to the accompanying even temperature, is to be credited very much of the success of the turnip-culture, which has within a century revolutionized the agriculture of Kugland; yet again, the magical effects of a thorough system of drainage are nowhere so demonstrable as in a soil constantly wetted, and giving a steady flow, however small, to the discharging tile. Measured by inches, the rain-fall is greater in most parts of America than in Great Britain; but this fall is so capricious with us, often so sudden and violent, that there must be inevitably a large surface-discharge, even though the tile, three feet below, is in working order. The true theory of skilful drainage is, not to carry away the quick flush of a shower, but to relieve a soil too heavily saturated by opening new outflows, setting new currents astir of both air and moisture, and thus giving new life and an enlarged capacity to lands that were dead with a stagnant over-soak.
Bearing in mind, then, the conditions of the British climate, which are so much in keeping with the "wet weather" of these studies, let us go back again to old Markham's day, and amble along—armed with our umbrellas—through the current of the seventeenth century.
James I., that conceited old pedant, whose "Counterblast to Tobacco" has worked the poorest of results, seems to have had a nice taste for fruits; and Sir Henry Wotton, his ambassador at Venice, writing from that city in 1622, says,—"I have sent the choicest melon-seeds of all kinds, which His Majesty doth expect, as I had order both from ray Lord Holderness and from Mr. Secretary Calvert." Sir Henry sent also with the seeds very particular directions for the culture of the plants, obtained probably from some head-gardener of a Priuli or a Morosini, whose melons had the full beat of Italian sunshine upon the south slopes of the Vicentine mountains. The same ambassador sends at that date to Lord Holderness "a double-flowering yellow rose, of no ordinary nature";[3] and it would be counted of no ordinary nature now, if what he avers be true, that "it flowreth every month from May till almost Christmas."
King James took special interest in the establishment of his garden at the Theobald Palace in Hertfordshire: there were clipped hedges, neat array of linden avenues, fountains, and a Mount of Venus within a labyrinth; twelve miles of wall encircled the park, and the soldiers of Cromwell found fine foraging-ground in it, when they entered upon the premises a few years later. The schoolmaster-king formed also a guild of gardeners in the city of London, at whose hands certificates of capacity for garden-work were demanded, and these to be given only after proper examination of the applicants. Lord Bacon possessed a beautiful garden, if we may trust his own hints to that effect, and the added praises of Wotton. Cashiobury, Holland House, and Greenwich gardens were all noted in this time; and the experiments and successes of the proprietor of Bednall-Greene garden I have already alluded to. But the country-gentleman, who lived upon his land and directed the cultivation of his property, was but a very savage type of the Bedford or Oxfordshire landholders of our day. It involved a muddy drag over bad roads, after a heavy Flemish mare, to bring either one's self or one's crops to market.
Sir Thomas Overbury, who draws such a tender picture of a "Milke-Mayde," is severe, and, I dare say, truthful, upon the country-gentleman. "His conversation," says he, "amongst his tenants is desperate: but amongst his equals full of doubt. His travel is seldome farther than the next market towne, and his inquisition is about the price of corne: when he travelleth, he will goe ten mile out of the way to a cousins house of his to save charges; and rewards servants by taking them by the hand when hee departs. Nothing under a sub-pœna can draw him to London: and when he is there, he sticks fast upon every object, casts his eyes away upon gazing, and becomes the prey of every cut-purse. When he comes home, those wonders serve him for his holy-day talke. If he goe to court, it is in yellow stockings: and if it be in winter, in a slight tafety cloake, and pumps and pantofles."
The portrait of the smaller farmer, who, in this time, tilled his own ground, is even more severely sketched by Bishop Earle. "A plain country fellow is one that manures his ground well, but lets himself lye fallow and unfilled. He has reason enough to do his business, and not enough to be idle or melancholy.... His hand guides the plough, and the plough his thoughts, and his ditch and land-mark is the very mound of his meditations. He expostulates with his oxen very understandingly, and speaks gee, and ree, better than English. His mind is not much distracted with objects, but if a good fat cow come in his way, he stands dumb and astonished, and though his haste be never so great, wilt fix here half an hours contemplation. His habitation is some poor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn by the loop-holes that let out smoak, which the rain had long since washed through, but for the double ceiling of bacon on the inside, which has hung there from his grand-sires time, and is yet to make rashers for posterity. He apprehends Gods blessings only in a good year, or a fat pasture, and never praises him but on good ground."
Such were the men who were to be reached by the agricultural literature of the day! Yet, notwithstanding this unpromising audience, scarcely a year passed but some talker was found who felt himself competent to expound the whole art and mystery of husbandry.
Adam Speed, Gent., (from which title we may presume that he was no Puritan,) published a little book in the year 1626, which he wittily called "Adam out of Eden." In this he undertakes to show how Adam, under the embarrassing circumstance of being shut out of Paradise, may increase the product of a farm from two hundred pounds to two thousand pounds a year by the rearing of rabbits on furze and broom! It is all mathematically computed; there is nothing to disappoint in the figures; but I suspect there might be in the rabbits.
Gentleman Speed speaks of turnips, clover, and potatoes; he advises the boiling of "butchers' blood" for poultry, and mixing the "pudding" with bran and other condiments, which will "feed the beasts very fat."