LONG VACATION CORRESPONDENCE. To TUE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."
SIR,—How is it that after a week or two of holidays I al- ways begin to feel an incompleteness in my very enjoyment, unless I can babble of green fields now and then to the Spec- tator, or of what else I am thinking about and doing ? The delight of turning ones back upon, and getting clean out of physical rapport with, the roaring Strand and Wellington Street, is one of the most keenly pleasurable sensations which a contributor can feel early in August. In the perfect quiet of the early autumn evenings one looks over the happy fields and into the golden sunsets, and dreams of all peaceful and glorious things —of the bad times that are gone, of the good time that is coming— of everything in heaven and earth except proofs and printers' devils. These last, and the publisher's box, and the editor's room, lie in a sort of hazy undisturbed background to the picture, adding a vague something to its charm from their very remoteness and incon- gruity. Perhaps, also, the consciousness that they are all per- forming their usual functions in the midst of great Babylon, while we are dwelling in a sort of garden of the blest, may not be un- pleasant to the unstrung contributorial mind,—just as some so-called Christians seem to think that Heaven will be more enjoyable to them through the contemplation from thence of that clear majority of the human race which they expect to see in companionship with Dives.
"On safety's rock I sits and sees The shipwreck of mine enimees," as the jumpers sing, touches a disagreeable but very real side of human nature. Notwithstanding all which delights, one finds that by September the contributing intellect begins to get restless. Cer- tain secretions accumulate which require to be carried out of the system through the usual weekly channel. A sense of incomplete- ness—of being out of communion with a portion of the human race with whom one has a right to sympathize and have intercourse —seizes on one. I probably do not know even by sight one in a thousand of your readers, but, though strangers in the flesh, I feel that there is a very real, invisible, or spiritual relationship be- tween us. What a psychological article you might give us on the said relationship between anonymous writers and their audiences! Meantime, I hope you will give me my old long vacation run under my old nom de plume, for though not a tourist just now in the British sense of the word, I am surely a traveller, as being away from home.
My wanderings hitherto might all be comprised in an area
of some thirty miles square, including the meeting-point of three counties. There is no very striking scenery in any of them, so far as I have seen ; but all of them are full of nooks and corners where one might doze or struggle on through life with much comfort and satisfaction, if it had only occurred to some of one's ancestors to conquer, purchase, or otherwise annex a good slice of either of them. The people are not my people ; their look is different, their ways are different, their speech is differ- ent, and yet the dear old county in which I was born is scarcely fifty miles away to the south-west. But they seem a good sort enough of English folk, and have many of the generic quaintnesses which mark Britons of all counties. First and foremost they have a griev- ance—a harvest grievance to suit the time of year—the question of mowing or reaping—which shall it be for the future? This is the great topic of conversation at the squire's table, in the gatherings of the farmers on market-day, amongst the labourers as they sit round the barrel of harvest beer in the field-corners during their short rests. (By the way, they call their half-hour's rest at four o'clock " beever," from "Loire," to drink, I suppose, but I never heard the word elsewhere.) Above all, the controversy interests and excites the gleaners, as well it may, for the reasons I hope to give you anon. The storm has been muttering for some time all round, at last it has burst. A squire of some note, who only lets from year to year, has just given out that such tenants of his as will not for the future give up the new-fangled plan of mowing, and reap their corn like their fathers before them, must throw up their holdings under him. This seems, or shall we say is, a pretty high-handed and arbitrary measure. But there are two sides to every ques- tion; so let us hear what the squire has to say for himself. He says, first, that there is very little difference in the price to the farmer between reaping and mowing ; secondly, that farmers ought to have haulm as well as straw, and can't have haulm if they mow ; thirdly, that the sample of reaped corn is always better than that of mown, and farmers ought to have good samples ; fourthly, that mowing interferes with the gleaners' rights and is a fraud on the poor ; lastly, that mown stubbles won't bold partridges, and that he won't have his sport spoilt.
The last argument is in one sense unanswerable. You might as well expect birds to lie on a willow-pattern plate as a mown stubble ; and in this rich corn country, where few beasts are kept, and there are no root crops or clover fields to speak of, the birds will pack and be as wild as hawks in three weeks or so unless there are long stubbles. But I apprehend, Sir, that neither you nor I shall let the game plea go for more than it is worth. As to the others, the farmers reply ; first, that they can mow for about 8s. 6d. per acre, while reaping costa us, and that he may call that a small difference, but they don't ; secondly, that though it is true that they can't have haulm and straw too if they mow, they know their own business, and prefer long straw to short straw and haulm ; thirdly, that the sample of mown wheat is only worse because the refuse wheat collected in raking is put with the good wheat into the rick, and they will for the future keep them separate, if he likes ; fourthly, that they must rake after mowing, and the gleaners need not come if it is not worth their while. In conclusion, they mutter that they pay rent and must make the most they can out of their land, and hint that leases are a fairer tenure than mere yearly holdings. To which last insinuations the squire replies warmly, that if it is to be a mere money business he shall let his farms by auction to the highest bidder ; and, as certain lands which have been lately so let have fetched fabulous prices, the soil being the cleanest and richest in the kingdom, and fit for market garden- ing, this threat acts like the shadow of a kite over a poultry-yard.
So it is a very pretty quarrel, and seems likely to last till the new reaping-machines put an end to it. They will also put an end to gleaning, and this brings us to the squire's only strong point, for I think, Sir, you will agree that in his economic views he is clearly out of court. But gleaning is a time- honoured institution, and, were it only in memory of Ruth, one which we cannot part from without regret. In these parts, too, it is really a great privilege as well as a recognized institu- tion. In many of the villages the gleaning bell tolls every morn- ing and evening ,at seven, and you see printed directions for the guidance of gleaners, placarded about the outskirts of the towns. Every reasonably diligent family, where there are three or four available children, gleans a quarter of wheat or more during harvest. A quarter of wheat is eight bushels, enough to keep a grown man in bread for a year. No wonder that the poor take the squire's view. And the particular squire who has belled the cat down here is just the man to carry them with him. In the early days of the present poor-law he used on certain mornings to sit in his justice-room and present half-a-crown to every poor person of his parishes who liked to come for it. This practice he has seen reason to discontinue, and he has mastered the poor-law, and all the blue-books of which it has been the parent, so well that he is now the first authority on the subject in the neighbourhood. Though he has become an un- flinching opponent of out-door relief, he insists on making the inmates of the house decently comfortable, and denounces separat- ing man and wife and selling poor folks' furniture. Moreover, he makes the matron or schoolmistress take the young children out for a good walk every morning, and, in short, rules his neigh- bourhood likes thoroughly illogical, arbitrary, kind-hearted Briton as he is. One would gladly see some solution of the question by which the poor would get some compensation for their gleaning rights, but in my present relaxed state of mind I can think of none.
There are other notable facts which meet one here, and stagger some of one's beliefs strangely. Prima facie one would say that an industry by which young girls can earn an independence must be a great blessing, and just one of the things we in England most want. Well, yesterday I was in villages where almost every girl is making lace all day when she is not gleaning; to-day I am in a village where they stand at the doors and sit on the banks by dozens, platting straw, gossiping, and staring at every passer- by. At these employments they can earn from six to eight shillings weekly from the age of fourteen or fifteen ; and what is the consequence? First, that they learn nothing else. There are actually schools in every village where nothing is taught but lace- making or platting. The spirit of the advice of that official of the last century, who replied to the Virginians, "D— your souls! grow tobacco," is thoroughly acted up to here. Then few of them will go into service, or are fit for it. Their earnings do not in- crease with their years, while their gossiping and slatternly habits do. Their work soon becomes merely mechanical, little better than pure idleness, and this idleness breeds immorality of all kinds. They congregate in the towns which are the centres of their pecu- liar industry. In one neighbouring town, said to be a nursery for the Haymarket, there are something like ten women to one man.
On the whole, it is a sad business, and in these districts they are but a draggle-tailed hopeless-looking female population. How is it all to be mended ?
The men ought to be, and I suppose are, demoralized also through their women ; but this is not apparent—at least, they can work as hard as their countrymen elsewhere. They have been constantly out soon after four in the morning during the last month, and for a trifle more beer will work on long after dark, and rather like it than otherwise. The longer one lives the more one wonders at and appreciates the indomitable working power of the English peasant. No fear of our going much down hill, so far as national well-doing depends on his labour. I am glad to say that his wages are on the rise too. The honest bailiff with whom I am lodging just now groans daily over the guinea a week and beer, which is the lowest figure at which he can get his men for harvest work. In former years he has never averaged above eighteen shillings, and considers himself and his employer as defrauded of the balance ; I need scarcely say that he does not get much sympathy from me upon the sore point. No such wheat har- vest has been known within the memory of man in these parts, but the wheat which is still uncanied owing to scarcity of labour is beginning to grow under the warm showers of the last few days. On the whole, the agricultural look-out was never more cheery in
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