Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

THE MAGIC OF FAME

51

thatch. Welsh slates are bad enough, but, alas! there is even a lower depth of ugliness. Corrugated iron is still more hideous, and this I sadly note is coming into use as a roofing material; it is cheap and effectual, absolutely waterproof and such an eyesore! How is it that things are so seldom cheap and beautiful-truly there are exceptions, but these only prove the rule-are these two qualities sworn enemies? If only the Welsh slates were of the delicious greeny-gray tint of the more expensive Cumberland ones, it would be a different matter. It is an astonishing thing how even good architects are neglectful of colour in their buildings, and what comparatively small thought they devote to the beauty of the roof.

Many people possibly would see nothing to admire or commend in Baldock; it would probably impress the average individual as being a sleepy, old-fashioned sort of place, deadly dull, and wholly devoid of interest; so doubtless the same individual would consider Stratford-on-Avon, had not Shakespeare been born there, and had not that magic accident of his birth caused the town to be visited and written about by famous authors, its beauties sought out and belauded by guide-book compilers, its quaint old-world bits of architecture to be sketched and painted and photographed endlessly, so that we all know how to admire it. Now, so far as I am aware, no very notable person has been born at Baldock, so the tourist comes not thither; and with nothing eventful to chronicle about the town, nothing to commend it but its quiet natural

ness and picturesqueness, which it shares with many another ancient English market-town, Baldock will have to sleep on unfamed, for its quiet charms are not of the nature to assert themselves or appeal to everybody. There is a beauty that requires searching after, which, not being pronounced, the eye needs training to see. Still, I think that even the most unobservant traveller, on passing through the quiet little town, must note its pleasing look of mellowness and naturalness, the latter of which qualities is attractively refreshing in this age of artificiality.

Out of Baldock our road rose gradually on an embankment, possibly one of the later improvements made by the old Turnpike Trust, when there was actually a feeling amongst the coach proprietors that they might successfully compete with the coming iron horse an idea that took some time to dispel, for even as late as October 1837 I find, from an old coaching poster so dated, that the "Red Rover" from London to Manchester was re-established as a commercial speculation. How long this "wellappointed coach" ran after its establishment I cannot say.

From the top of the rise we obtained a good view of Baldock, that, with the woods around, the silvery sheen of water below, and the soft sky above, made a very pretty picture; so pretty, indeed, that the temptation to sketch it was not to be resisted. But later on we had to harden our hearts and pass by many a picturesque spot without using our pencil, otherwise we should have made more sketches than

[blocks in formation]

miles per hour, and our journey would not have been finished by Christmas time. To the artist eye, accustomed to look out for beauty, rural England is one succession of pictures!

We now struck upon a purely farming country, where the fields were large and divided by hedgerows into a sort of glorified and many-tinted chessboard-not a happy comparison certainly, but "'twill serve." In some of the fields we saw gleaners, women and children, at work amongst the stubble, -I had nearly written at play, so unlike work did their occupation seem, for the children were romping, and the women were laughing and chatting, and it did our hearts good to hear the merry prattle and cheerful voices. Would all labour were as lightsome!

We had an idea that the gleaner, like the almost forgotten flail, was a thing of the past, but were delighted to find that the good old custom, honoured by over two thousand years of observance, sung of by poets and beloved by painters, has not wholly disappeared, and that some of the romance of the fields is left to us. The flail, that used to knock out the corn on the old barn floors with much thumping, I have not met with for years long past, but I believe, from what I hear, that it still is used in a few remote places. The reaping machine has driven the slow sickle into a few odd corners of the land, where the ground is rough and the crops are small, though sometimes it has momentarily reappeared elsewhere when the corn has been badly laid.

The mowing machine also has to a great

extent, though less universally, taken the place of the scythe. And with these changes has come a change over the sounds of the countryside. For the occasional whetting of the scythe we have the continuous rattle of the machine; and the puffing and peculiar humming of the steam-thresher, heard from afar, has taken the place of the muffled thumping of the flail on the soft straw, only to be heard a short way off.

The fact cannot be blinked that husbandry has lost not a little of its past-time picturesque and poetic aspect. Perhaps no one realises this more than the artist; for though it may be done, and has been done, yet for all it is not easy to put romance into commonplace machinery-that means poetry without the gathered glamour of the associations of long years. Machinery has at last but too successfully invaded the farm, and the agriculturist is being slowly converted into a sort of produce manufacturer. Now it is difficult to grow sentimental over machinery! The time may even come when the readers of Crabbe, Gray, Thomson, and other poets of the countryside will need the aid of a commentator to understand their terms aright. Only the other day a literary man asked me to describe a flail, as he was not quite sure what it was! Possibly some of us hardly realise how rapidly "the old order gives place to the new," till unexpectedly the fact is brought to mind by some such question. I am thankful to say that I have heard nothing of the "Silo" of late, so that I trust that ensilage, that was to do such great things for the English farmers, is a

THE POETRY OF TOIL

55

failure, and never likely to usurp the place of the pleasant hay-field and fragrant haystacks. We simply cannot afford to improve the merry haymaking away -it is the very poetry of toil.

Driving on, we presently passed the fortieth milestone from London, just beyond which a post by the roadside informed us that we had entered Bedfordshire. Crossing this imaginary line brought back to mind a story we had been told concerning it by an antiquarian friend, as follows:-Just upon the boundaries of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire formerly stood a rambling old farm-house; the living-room of this was long and low, and on the centre beam that went across the ceiling (such as may still be found in ancient buildings) was inscribed this legend: "If you are cold, go to Hertfordshire -which apparently inhospitable invitation was explained by the fact of the peculiar situation of the room, one-half being in the one county and one-half in the other, and it chanced that the fireplace was at the Hertfordshire end!

[ocr errors]

Soon after the change of counties, at the foot of a long gradual descent, we found ourselves in the hamlet of Astwick, where by the wayside we espied a primitive but picturesque little inn boasting the title of "The Greyhound," with a pump and horsetrough at one side, as frequently represented in old pictures and prints of ancient hostelries -- a trough of the kind in which Mr. Weller the elder so ignominiously doused the head of the unfortunate Mr. Stiggins. Besides the trough there was a tiny garden of colourful flowers in front of the

« AnteriorContinuar »