The Rural Life of England

by William Howitt

The next morning I was up early, and out to reconnoitre the place and neighbourhood; and this young man having found out that I was also addicted to the unwholesome practice of reading books, took at once a great fancy to me, and went with me as guide and cicerone. I found that all the mystery about him was, that he was a youth articled to an attorney in great practice, and had stooped over the desk a little too much, but was soon likely to be as strong and sound as ever, being neither consumptive nor crossed in love, although in love he certainly was. A more simple-hearted, good-natured fellow, it was impossible could exist. He had the most profound admiration of all poets and philosophers, and read Goldsmith, Shenstone, and Addison, with a relish that one would give a good deal for. As for Sir Walter Scott, and Lord Byron, and Tom Moore, he knew half of their voluminous poetical works by heart; mention any fine passage, and he immediately spouted you the whole of it; and as for the Waverley Novels, he had evidently devoured them entire, and was full of their wonders and characters. Yet, thus fond of poetry and romance, it was not the less true that he had a fancy for mathematics, and played on the fiddle and the flute into the bargain. Nor was this all the extent of his tastes, he had quite a penchant for natural history; had he time, he declared he would study botany, ornithology, geology, and conchology too; and yet, although such a book-worm himself, he seemed to enjoy the company of the other visiters there who never read at all. There was a whole troop that he made acquaintance with, and whose characters he sketched to me, particularly those of a merry set who lodged at a cottage opposite, where he often went to amuse them with his fiddle. As my business was to see what were the characters and the amusements of such a place, I desired him to introduce me to them, but in the first place to let us run a little over the country.

The country was rich and flat, divided into great meadows full of luxuriant grass, grazed by herds of fine cattle, and surrounded by noble trees, which served to break up the monotony of the landscape. Here and there you saw the tall, square, substantial tower of a village church peeping over its surrounding screen of noble elms. We were accustomed to stroll into these churchyards, admiring the singularly large and excellent churches, all of solid stone; the spacious graveyard and the large heavy headstones, adorned with carved skulls and cross-bones; and gilded angels with long trumpets figured above the simple epitaphs of the departed villagers. The farm-houses, too, surrounded also with tall elms, and with a great air of wealth and comfort, drew our attention. As we approached nearer to the sea, the country was more destitute of wood; consisted of very large fields of corn, then beginning to change into the rich hues of ripeness; fields also of woad, a plant used in dyeing, and there extensively cultivated; and these fields intersected no longer by hedges, but by deep wide ditches called dykes, in which grew plenty of reeds, water-flags, a tall and splendid species of marsh ranunculus (R. lingua) and yellow and white water-lilies. As we drew near to the village, if village such scattered dwellings could be called, we were struck with the peculiar aspect of the dry lanes, and the plants which grew there, so different to those of an inland neighbourhood. They were exactly such as Crabbe has described them in such a situation:—

There, fed by food they love, to rankest size,
Around the dwelling docks and wormwood rise;
Here the strong mallow strikes her slimy root;
Here the dull nightshade hangs her deadly fruit;
On hills of dust the henbane’s faded green,
And pencilled flower of sickly scent is seen;
At the wall’s base the fiery nettle springs,
With fruit globose and fierce with poisoned stings.
Above, the growth of many a year, is spread
The yellow level of the stonecrop’s bed;
In every chink delights the fern to grow,
With glossy leaf and tawny bloom below.

The great embankment secured all this from the invasion of the sea, and, winding along the flat sands, formed a delightful walk when the tide was roaring up against it. Here also the male portion of the visiters came to bathe; and, when the tide was up, nothing could be more delicious. They could undress on the sunny sward of the mound at whatever distance from the others they pleased, for there were many miles of the bank; and the waves dashing gently against the grassy slope, received them on a secure and smooth sand, at a depth sufficient to allow them either to wade or swim. They generally, however, undressed near enough to swim or wade in company, and to splash one another and play all manner of practical jokes.

When the tide was out, from this bank you had a view of a great extent of level sands, monotonous enough in themselves, but animated by the view of vessels in full sail passing along the Channel to or from the neighbouring port, and by the flight and cries of the sea-birds. Along these sands we ranged every day to a great distance, collecting shells, leaping the narrow channels of salt water left in the hollows, shooting gulls, watching the shrimps that were floating in the tide, and amusing ourselves with the crabs, which, left in the holes in the strand, were running sideways here and there in great trepidation, yet never so much alarmed as not to be ready to seize and devour those of their own species that were less in personal bulk and prowess than themselves. Then, again, we found a good deal of employment in botanising amongst the patches of sea-wilderness, which were not so often submersed by the tide as to destroy the vegetation altogether, or to produce only fucus and other sea-weeds. The rest-harrow, the eringo with its cerulean leaves, the stag’s horn plantain, the glasswort or common (not the true) samphire—these and many others had all an interest for us. In one place we found the sea-convolvulus blowing in its rich and prodigal beauty on the sands; and then we came to wild hills of sand thrown up by the billows of ages, a whole region of desolation, overgrown with the sea-wheat, and the tall yellow stems and umbels of the wild celery.

Such was the scenery; the people of the cottages were generally fishermen, with their families; and the visiters, farmers and persons of that class, often with their families. At the house opposite us, as I have said, was the merriest crew. My friend the young lawyer was in the habit of running in and out amongst them as he pleased. He proposed that we should go and dine with them, as they had a sort of ordinary table, where you could dine at a fixed and very moderate charge, as all charges indeed were there. Here we found about a dozen people. One, who appeared and proved an old gentleman-farmer, a Mr. Milly, always took the head of the table; and a merrier mortal could not have been there, except he who occupied the other end, a fellow of infinite jest, like Sir John Falstaff, and to the full as corpulent. Who and what he was, I know not, save that he was a most fat and merry fellow, and went by the name of Sir John between the young lawyer, whom I shall call Wilson, and myself. This joyous old gentleman had his wife and son and daughter with him. The son was a young man as fond of a practical joke as his father was of a verbal one; nay, he was not short of a verbal one too, on occasions. He was of a remarkably dark-brown complexion, and on some one asking him how he came to be so dark, when the rest of his family were fair, he at once replied, “Oh, can’t you fancy how that was? It happened when I was a child in the cradle. I got turned on my face, and had like to have been smothered. I got so black in the face, I have never recovered my colour again. My mother can tell you all about it—can’t you mother?” At this repartee, all the company laughed heartily, and truly it was a company that could laugh heartily. They had merry hearts. Then there was a good worthy farmer of the real old school. I was near saying that John Farn was old, but, in fact, he was not more than five-and-thirty, but his gravity gave him an appearance of something like age. He was dressed in a suit of drab, with an ample coat of the good old farmerly cut, and jack-boots like a trooper. But John Farn had a deal of sober sound sense, and a mind that, had it been called out, would have been found noble. I became very fond of John. The rest were young farmers and tradesmen, full of youth and life. They had brought their horses with them, and some of them gigs, and were fond of all mounting and scouring away on the shore for miles together.

The great business, indeed, was to bathe, and eat and drink, and ride or walk, and play at quoits or bowls. If the tide was up early in the morning, all would be up and out, and have their dip before breakfast. Then they would come back hungry as hunters, and devour their coffee, beef, and broiled ham, and shrimps fresh from the cauldron, and then out, some to ride round to have a look at the neighbouring farms, or on the shore to see the fishing smacks go out or come in. Others got to quoits or bowls till dinner; and after a hearty meal and a good long chat, they would slowly saunter up to the hotel, and see what company was there, and take a glass and a pipe with some of them, and see the newspaper, and perhaps have a game at bowls there, and then back to tea; after which they grew very social, and called on the other boarders at the cottages near, and strolled out with the ladies to the bank, which was not far off; and so wiled the time away till supper. Four meals a-day did they regularly sit down to, and enjoy themselves as much as if they had not eaten for a day or two, praising all the time the wonderful property of sea-air for getting an appetite. As sure as shrimps appeared at breakfast, did soles at supper; and after supper one drew out his bottle of wine, and another got his brandy and water, and all grew merry. Those that liked it took a pipe, and it annoyed nobody. There was plenty of joking and laughter, that it would have done the most fastidious good to hear, and as much wit, and perhaps a good deal more, than where there does not exist the same freedom. More jovial evenings I never saw. Wilson gave them a tune on his flute, or took his fiddle; they cleared the floor of the largest room, invited some of the neighbouring visiters who had wives or daughters with them, and had a dance. On such evenings Sir John Falstaff sat in the large bay-window of the apartment for coolness, and wiped his brow and sang his merriest songs. His songs were all merry, and he had a host of them: it was a wonder where he had picked them up. His son often joined him, sometimes his wife and daughter too. It was a merry family. Surely never could care have found a way into their house. Not even the young man’s brown complexion could give him a care; it only furnished him with a joke, and made laughter contagious. Never could the old man have been so fat, had care been able to lay hold on him. The whole of that huge bulk was a mass of rejoicing. How his eyes did shine and twinkle with delight as he sang! what silent laughter played around his mouth, and stole over his ruddy cheeks, like gleams of pleasantest lightning of a summer’s night, as he lifted his glass to his head, and listened to some one else! But, alas! all his mirth was well-nigh closed one day. He was tempted by the fineness of the weather into the tide, contrary to his wont, and his doctor’s order. Some one suddenly missed him; all looked round: at a distance something like a buoy was seen floating; it was Sir John; his fat floated; his head had gone down like a stone; they just pulled him up time enough to save him, but he was blacker in the face than ever his son had been in the cradle, and got a fright that spoiled all his mirth for some days.

But there was a ball at the hotel, and every body was off to it; all except Wilson, who was not well, and myself, who stayed to keep him company. Even grave John Farn, in his drab suit and jackboots, would go. Who would have thought that there was such a taste for pleasure in John Farn? John Farn was very fond of hearing Wilson and myself talk of books. He would come to our cottage, and sit and listen for hours to our conversation, or take up some of our books himself, and read. I perceived that there was an appetite for knowledge in him that had never been called out, because it had had nothing to feed on; but it was clear that it would soon, if it was in the way of aliment and excitement, become fearfully voracious. When he found the name of Dryden in a volume, he declared that he was born in the same parish. He put the book into his pocket, and was missed all that day. Somebody, by chance, saw him issue out of a great reed bed towards evening; he had read the volume through, and declared that he should think ten times better of his parish now for having produced such a man. Who would have thought that John Farn, the Northamptonshire farmer and grazier, and who had lived all his life amongst bullocks, and whose whole talk was of them, would have fastened thus suddenly on a volume of Dryden’s poems? But John used to accompany Wilson and myself, botanising along the shore and the inland dykes; and it was curious to see with what a grave enthusiasm he would climb in his great jack-boots over the roughest fences; how he would leap across those wide dykes; how he would splash through the salt-water pools and streams to tear up a flower or a sea-weed that he wanted; and with what an earnest eye he would look and listen as we mentioned its name, and pointed out its class in the volume, or related its uses! There was an undiscovered world, and a great one, in the soul of that John Farn.

The more I saw of that man, the more I liked him. The stores of yet unstirred life, both of intellect and feeling in his frame, became every day more strongly apparent. He would sit with us on the sea-bank for hours watching the tide come up, or watching its play and the play of light and shadow over it when at flood, and drink down greedily all that was said of this or other countries, all that had in it knowledge of any kind. His whole body seemed full of the joyous excitement of a youth that in years should have passed over him, but was yet unspent, and was now only found. He rose up one day and said, “Let us hire a ship, and sail out to some other country.” At the moment we laughed at the idea, but John Farn persisted with the utmost gravity in his proposal, and eventually we did hire a smack and sailed across to Norfolk. We visited Lynn; walked over the grounds of the school where Eugene Aram was an usher when he was taken for the murder; and nothing but the threatening of the weather would have prevented us crossing over to the Continent. As it was, it was delightful to see the childlike enjoyment with which that grave man saw the breezy expanse of ocean, the fiery colour of its waters as the vessel cut through them in the night, the seals that lay on a mid-sea rock as we sailed along, and the birds of ocean screaming and plunging in its billows.

There was a legion of things in the bosom of John Farn that he knew nothing of all the years that he had been buying and selling cattle, but were now all bursting to the light with a startling vigour. I wonder whether they have since troubled him, like blind giants groping their way to the face of heaven, or whether, amid his cattle and his quiet fields, they have collapsed again into dim and unconscious dreams; but the last action which I witnessed in him, made me sure that his moral feeling was as noble as I suspected his intellectual strength to be great.