Afoot in England

by W. H. Hudson

I congratulated myself on having been refused accommodation at the "George and Dragon," and was more than satisfied to pass an evening without a book, sitting there alone listening to an imaginary conversation between those two curious friends. "Lord Carnarvon," says Cobbett, "told a man, in 1820, that he did not like my politics. But what did he mean by my politics? I have no politics but such as he ought to like. To be sure I labour most assiduously to destroy a system of distress and misery; but is that any reason why a Lord should dislike my politics? However, dislike them or like them, to them, to those very politics, the Lords themselves must come at last."

Undoubtedly he talked like that, just as he wrote and as he spoke in public, his style, if style it can be called, being the most simple, direct, and colloquial ever written. And for this reason, when we are aweary of the style of the stylist, where the living breathing body becomes of less consequence than its beautiful clothing, it is a relief, and refreshment, to turn from the precious and delicate expression, the implicit word, sought for high and low and at last found, the balance of every sentence and perfect harmony of the whole work—to go from it to the simple vigorous unadorned talk of Rural Rides. A classic, and as incongruous among classics as a farmer in his smock-frock, leggings, and stout boots would appear in a company of fine gentlemen in fashionable dress. The powerful face is the main thing, and we think little of the frock and leggings and how the hair is parted or if parted at all. Harsh and crabbed as his nature no doubt was, and bitter and spiteful at times, his conversation must yet have seemed like a perpetual feast of honeyed sweets to his farmer friend. Doubtless there was plenty of variety in it: now he would expatiate on the beauty of the green downs over which he had just ridden, the wooded slopes in their glorious autumn colours, and the rich villages between; this would remind him of Malthus, that blasphemous monster who had dared to say that the increase in food production did not keep pace with increase of population; then a quieting down, a breathing-space, all about the turnip crop, the price of eggs at Weyhill Fair, and the delights of hare coursing, until politics would come round again and a fresh outburst from the glorious demagogue in his tantrums.

At eight o'clock Cobbett would say good night and go to bed, and early next morning write down what he had said to his friend, or some of it, and send it off to be printed in his paper. That, I take it, is how Rural Rides was written, and that is why it seems so fresh to us to this day, and that to take it up after other books is like going out from a luxurious room full of fine company into the open air to feel the wind and rain on one's face and see the green grass. But I very much regret that Cobbett tells us nothing of his farmer friend. Blount, I imagine, must have been a man of a very fine character to have won the heart and influenced such a person. Cobbett never loses an opportunity of vilifying the parsons and expressing his hatred of the Established Church; and yet, albeit a Protestant, he invariably softens down when he refers to the Roman Catholic faith and appears quite capable of seeing the good that is in it.

It was Blount, I think, who had soothed the savage breast of the man in this matter. The only thing I could hear about Blount and his "queer notions" regarding the land was his idea that the soil could be improved by taking the flints out. "The soil to look upon," Cobbett truly says, "appears to be more than half flint, but is a very good quality." Blount thought to make it better, and for many years employed all the aged poor villagers and the children in picking the flints from the ploughed land and gathering them in vast heaps. It does not appear that he made his land more productive, but his hobby was a good one for the poor of the village; the stones, too, proved useful afterwards to the road-makers, who have been using them these many years. A few heaps almost clothed over with a turf which had formed on them in the course of eighty years were still to be seen on the land when I was there.

The following day I took no ride. The weather was so beautiful it seemed better to spend the time sitting or basking in the warmth and brightness or strolling about. At all events, it was a perfect day at Hurstbourne Tarrant, though not everywhere, for on that third of November the greatest portion of Southern England was drowned in a cold dense white fog. In London it was dark, I heard. Early in the morning I listened to a cirl-bunting singing merrily from a bush close to the George and Dragon Inn. This charming bird is quite common in the neighbourhood, although, as elsewhere in England, the natives know it not by its book name, nor by any other, and do not distinguish it from its less engaging cousin, the yellowhammer.

After breakfast I strolled about the common and in Doles Wood, on the down above the village, listening to the birds, and on my way back encountered a tramp whose singular appearance produced a deep impression on my mind. We have heard of a work by some modest pressman entitled "Monarchs I have met", and I sometimes think that one equally interesting might be written on "Tramps I have met". As I have neither time nor stomach for the task, I will make a present of the title to any one of my fellow-travellers, curious in tramps, who cares to use it. This makes two good titles I have given away in this chapter with a borrowed one.

But if it had been possible for me to write such a book, a prominent place would be given in it to the one tramp I have met who could be accurately described as gorgeous. I did not cultivate his acquaintance; chance threw us together and we separated after exchanging a few polite commonplaces, but his big flamboyant image remains vividly impressed on my mind.

At noon, in the brilliant sunshine, as I came loiteringly down the long slope from Doles Wood to the village, he overtook me. He was a huge man, over six feet high, nobly built, suggesting a Scandinavian origin, with a broad blond face, good features, and prominent blue eyes, and his hair was curly and shone like gold in the sunlight. Had he been a mere labourer in a workman's rough clay-stained clothes, one would have stood still to look at and admire him, and say perhaps what a magnificent warrior he would have looked with sword and spear and plumed helmet, mounted on a big horse! But alas! he had the stamp of the irreclaimable blackguard on his face; and that same handsome face was just then disfigured with several bruises in three colours—blue, black, and red. Doubtless he had been in a drunken brawl on the previous evening and had perhaps been thrown out of some low public-house and properly punished.

In his dress he was as remarkable as in his figure. Bright blue trousers much too small for his stout legs, once the property, no doubt, of some sporting young gent of loud tastes in colours; a spotted fancy waistcoat, not long enough to meet the trousers, a dirty scarlet tie, long black frock-coat, shiny in places, and a small dirty grey cap which only covered the topmost part of his head of golden hair.

Walking by the hedge-side he picked and devoured the late blackberries, which were still abundant. It was a beautiful unkept hedge with scarlet and purple fruit among the many-coloured fading leaves and silver-grey down of old-man's-beard.