Rural Rides Page 15

  This is really a soaking day, thus far. I got here at nine o’clock. I stripped off my coat, and put it by the kitchen fire. In a parlour just eight feet square I have another fire, and have dried my shirt on my back. We shall see what this does for a hooping cough. The clouds fly so low as to be seen passing by the sides of even little hills on these downs. The Devil is said to be busy in a high wind; but, he really appears to be busy now in this South-west wind. The Quakers will, next market day, at Mark-lane, be as busy as he. They and the Ministers and St Swithin and Devil all seem to be of a mind.

  I must not forget the churches. That of DONNINGTON is very small, for a church. It is about twenty feet wide and thirty long. It is, however, sufficient for the population, the amount of which is, two hundred and twenty-two, not one half of whom are, of course, ever at church at one time. There is, however, plenty of room for the whole: the ‘tower’ of this church is about double the size of a centry-box. The parson, whose name is DAVISON, did not, when the Return was laid before Parliament, in 1818, reside in the parish. Though the living is a large living, the parsonage house was let to ‘a lady and her three daughters’. What impudence a man must have to put this into a Return! The church at UPWALTHAM is about such another, and the ‘tower’ still less than that at DONNINGTON. Here the population is seventy-nine. The parish is a rectory, and, in the Return before mentioned, the parson (whose name was TRIPP), says, that the church will hold the population, but, that the parsonage house will not hold him! And why? Because it is ‘a miserable cottage’. I looked about for this ‘miserable cottage’, and could not find it. What an impudent fellow this must have been! And, indeed, what a state of impudence have they not now arrived at! Did he, when he was ordained, talk any thing about a fine house to live in? Did Jesus Christ and Saint Paul talk about fine houses? Did not this priest most solemnly vow to God, upon the altar, that he would be constant, in season and out of season, in watching over the souls of his flock? However, it is useless to remonstrate with this set of men. Nothing will have any effect upon them. They will keep grasping at the tithes as long as they can reach them. ‘A miserable cottage!’ What impudence! What, Mr TRIPP, is it a fine house that you have been appointed and ordained to live in? Lord Egremont is the patron of Mr Tripp; and he has a duty to perform too; for, the living is not his: he is, in this case, only an hereditary trustee for the public; and he ought to see that this parson resides in the parish, which, according to his own Return, yields him 125l. a year. EASTDEAN is a Vicarage, with a population of 353, a church which the parson says will hold 200, and which I say will hold 600 or 700, and a living worth 85l. a-year, in the gift of the Bishop of Chichester.

  WESTDEAN is united with SINGLETON, the living is in the gift of the Church at Chichester and the Duke of Richmond alternately; it is a large living, it has a population of 613, and the two churches, say the parson, will hold 200 people! What careless, or what impudent fellows these must have been. These two churches will hold a thousand people, packed much less close than they are in meeting houses.

  At UPWALTHAM there is a toll gate, and, when the woman opened the door of the house to come and let me through, I saw some straw plat lying in a chair. She showed it me; and I found that it was made by her husband, in the evenings, after he came home from work, in order to make him a hat for the harvest. I told her how to get better straw for the purpose; and, when I told her, that she must cut the grass, or the grain, green, she said, ‘Aye, I dare say, it is so: and I wonder we never thought of that before; for, we sometimes make hats out of rushes, cut green, and dried, and the hats are very durable.’ This woman ought to have my Cottage Economy. She keeps the toll-gate at Upwaltham, which is called Waltham, and which is on the turnpike road from Petworth to Chichester. Now, if any gentleman, who lives at Chichester, will call upon my Son, at the Office of the Register in Fleet Street, and ask for a copy of Cottage Economy, to be given to this woman, he will receive the copy, and my thanks, if he will have the goodness to give it to her, and to point to her the Essay on Straw Plat.

  Fareham (Hants), Saturday August

  Here I am in spite of St Swithin! – The truth is, that the Saint is like most other oppressors: rough him!12 rough him! and he relaxes. After drying myself, and sitting the better part of four hours at Singleton, I started in the rain, boldly setting the saint at defiance, and expecting to have not one dry thread by the time I got to Havant, which is nine miles from Fareham, and four from Cosham. To my most agreeable surprise, the rain ceased before I got by Selsey, I suppose it is called, where Lord Selsey’s house and beautiful and fine estate is. On I went, turning off to the right to go to Funtington and Westbourne, and getting to Havant to bait my horse, about four o’clock.

  From LAVANT (about two miles back from Funtington) the ground begins to be a sea side flat. The soil is somewhat varied in quality and kind; but, with the exception of an enclosed common between Funtington and Westbourne, it is all good soil. The corn of all kinds good and earlier than further back. They have begun cutting peas here, and, near Lavant, I saw a field of wheat nearly ripe. The Swedish turnips very fine, and still earlier than on the South Downs. Prodigious crops of walnuts; but the apples bad along here. The Soudi West winds have cut diem off; and, indeed, how should it be otherwise, if these winds happen to prevail in May, or early in June?

  On the new enclosure near Funtington, the wheat and oats are both nearly ripe.

  In a new enclosure, near WesAourne, I saw the only really blighted wheat that I have yet seen this year. ‘Oh!’ exclaimed I, ‘that my Lord Liverpool; that my much respected stern-path-of-duty-man could but see that wheat, which God and the seedsman intended to be white; but which the Devil (listening to the prayer of the Quakers) has made black! Oh! could but my Lord see it, lying flat upon the ground, with the May-weed and the Couch-grass pushing up through it, and with a whole flock of rooks pecking away at its ears! Then would my much valued Lord say, indeed, that the “difficulties” of agriculture are about to receive the “greatest abatement”’!

  But now I come to one of the great objects of my journey: that is to say, to see the state of the corn along at the South foot and on the South side of Portsdown-hill. It is impossible that there can be, any where, a better corn country than this. The hill is eight miles long, and about three-fourths of a mile high, beginning at the road that runs along at the foot of the hill. On the hill-side the corn land goes rather better than half way up; and, on the sea-side, the corn land is about the third (it may be half) a mile wide. Portsdown-hill is very much in the shape of an oblong tin cover to a dish. From BEDHAMPTON, which lies at the Eastern end of the hill, to Fareham, which is at the Western end of it, you have brought under your eye not less than eight square miles of corn fields, with scarcely a hedge or ditch of any consequence, and being, on an average, from twenty to forty acres each in extent. The land is excellent. The situation good for manure. The spot the earliest in the whole kingdom. Here, if the corn were backward, then the harvest must be backward. We were talking at Reigate of the prospect of a backward harvest. I observed, that it was a rule, that, if no wheat were cut under Portsdown-hill on the hill fair-day, 26th July, the harvest must be generally backward. When I made this observation, the fair-day was passed; but, I determined in my mind to come and see how the matter stood. When, dierefore, I got to the village of Bedhampton, I began to look out pretty sharply. I came on to WIMMERING, which is just about the mid-way along the foot of the hill, and there I saw, at a good distance from mt, five men reaping in a field of wheat of about 40 acres. I found, upon inquiry, that they began this morning, and that the wheat belongs to Mr BONIFACE, of Wimmering. Here the first sheaf is cut that is cut in England: that the reader may depend upon. It was never known, that the average even of Hampshire was less than ten days behind the average of Portsdown-hill. The corn under the hill is as good as I ever saw it, except in the year 1813. No beans here. No peas. Scarcely any oats. Wheat, barley, and turnips. The Swedish turnips not so good as on th
e Soudi Downs and near Fundngton; but the wheat full as good, radier better; and the barley as good as it is possible to be. In looking at these crops, one wonders whence are to come the hands to clear diem off.

  A very pleasant ride to day; and the pleasanter for my having set the wet Saint at defiance. It is about thirty miles from Petwordi to Fareham; and I got in in very good time. I have now come, if I include my boltings, for the purpose of looking at farms and woods, a round hundred miles from the WEN to this town of FFAREHAM; and, in the whole of the hundred miles, I have not seen one single wheat rick, though I have come through as fine corn countries as any in England, and by the homesteads of the richest of farmers. Not one single wheat rick have I seen, and not one rick of any sort of corn. I never saw, nor heard of the like of this before; and, if I had not witnessed the fact with my own eyes I could not have believed it. There are some farmers, who have corn in dieir bams, perhaps; but, when there is no rick left, there is very litde corn in the hands of fanners. Yet, the markets, St Swidiin notwithstanding, do not rise. This harvest must be three weeks later than usual; and the last harvest was three weeks earlier than usual. The last crop was begun upon at once, on account of the badness of the wheat of the year before. So that the last crop will have had to give food for thirteen months and a half. And yet, the markets do not rise! And yet there are men, fanners, mad enough to diink, that they have got past the bad place’, and that dungs will come about, and are coming about.! And LETHBRIDGE, of die Collective, withdraws his motion because he has got what he wanted; namely a return of good and ‘remunerating prices’! The Morning Chronicle of this day, which has met me at this place, has the following paragraph. ‘The weather is much improved, though it does not yet assume the character of being fine. At the Corn Exchange since Monday the arrivals consist of 7,130 quarters of wheat, 450 quarters of barley, 8,300 quarters of oats, and 9,200 sacks of flour. The demand for wheat is next to Zero, and for oats it is extremely dull. To effect sales, prices are not much attended to, for the demand cannot be increased at the present currency. The farmers should pay attention to oats, for the foreign new, under the King’s lock, will be brought into consumption, unless a decline takes place immediately, and a weight will thereby be thrown over the markets, which under existing circumstances will be extremely detrimental to the agricultural interests. Its distress however does not deserve much sympathy, for as soon as there was a prospect of the payment of rents, the cause of the people was abandoned by the Representatives of Agriculture in the Collected Wisdom, and Mr Brougham’s most excellent measure for increasing the consumption of Malt was neglected.13 Where there is no sympathy, none can be expected, and the land proprietors need not in future depend on the assistance of the mercantile and manufacturing interests, should their own distress again require a united effort to remedy the general grievances.’ As to the mercantile and manufacturing people, what is the land to expect from them? But, I agree with the Chronicle, that the landlords deserve ruin. They abandoned the public cause, the moment they thought that they saw a prospect of getting rents. That prospect will soon disappear, unless they pray hard to St Swithin to insist upon forty days wet after his birth-day. I do not see what the farmers can do about the price of oats. They have no power to do any thing, unless they come with their cavalry horses and storm the ‘King’s lock’. In short, it is all confusion in men’s minds as well as in their pockets. There must be something completely out of joint, when the Government are afraid of the effects of a good crop. I intend to set off to-morrow for BOTLEY, and go thence to Easton; and then to Alton and Crowdall and Farnham, to see how the hops are there. By the time that I get back to the WEN, I shall know nearly the real state of the case as to crops; and that, at this time, is a great matter.