On the occasion of a concert at Malvern, which my wife and her sister organized for the benefit of our church restoration fund, I gave all my men a holiday, and sent them off by train at an early hour; they were to climb the Worcestershire Beacon—the highest point of the Malvern range—in the morning, and attend the concert in the afternoon. It was a lovely day, and the programme was duly carried out. Next morning I found Jarge and another man, who had been detailed for the day's work to sow nitrate of soda on a distant wheat-field, sitting peacefully under the hedge; they told me that the excitement and the climb had completely tired them out, but that they would stop and complete the job, no matter how late at night that might be. It was the hill-climbing, I think, that had brought into play muscles not generally used in our flat country. I sympathized, and left them resting, but the work was honourably concluded before they left the field.
When there was illness in Jarge's house and somebody told him that the doctor had been seen leaving, he answered that he "Would sooner see the butcher there any day"—not, perhaps, a very happy expression in the circumstances, but intended to convey that a butcher's bill, for good meat supplied, was more satisfactory than a doctor's account, which represented nothing in the way of commissariat.
Among the annual trips to which I treated my men, I sent them for a long summer day to London, and one of my pupils kindly volunteered to act as conductor to the sights. They had a very successful day, and the principal streets and shows were visited; among the latter the Great Wheel, then very popular, was the one that seemed to interest them most.
Next morning some of the travellers were hoeing beans in one of my fields; I interviewed them on my round, and inquired what they thought of London. They had much enjoyed the day, and were greatly struck by the fact that the barmaid, at the place where they had eaten the lunch they took with them, had recognized them as "Oostershire men"; they had demanded their beer in three or four quart jugs, which could be handed round so that each man could take a pull in turn, instead of the usual fashion of separate glasses, and it appeared that this indicated the locality from whence they came. Probably she had noticed their accent, and, being a native of Worcestershire, remembered their intimate drinking custom as a county peculiarity. The men proceeded to describe the sights of London, and one of them added that there was one thing they could not find there, stopping suddenly in some confusion. I pressed him to explain. He still hesitated, and, turning to the others, said: "You tell the master, Bill." Bill was not so diffident. "Well," he said, "we couldn't see a good-looking 'ooman in Lunnon; for Jarge here, 'e was judge over 'em for a bit, and then Tom 'e took it, nor 'e couldn't see one neither!"
Jarge was somewhat of a bon vivant, and much appreciated my annual present of a piece of Christmas beef. When thanking me and descanting upon its tenderness and acceptability, on one occasion, he continued, "It ain't like the sort of biff we folks has to put up with, that tough you has to set in the middle of the room at dinner, for fear you might daish your brains out agen the wall a-tuggin' at it with your teeth!"
Jarge had one song and only one that I ever heard, and he was always called upon for it at harvest suppers and other jollifications; it was not a classic, but he rendered it with characteristic drollery, and always brought down the house. I conclude my sketch of him by mentioning it because it is almost my last impression of his vivid personality, trotted out with great energy at my farewell supper, a day or two before I left Aldington.
Among the men who were bequeathed to me, so to speak, by my predecessor, Tom was one of whom I always had a high opinion. Tall, vigorous, and well made, one recognized at once his possibilities as a valuable man. He was somewhat cautious, taciturn, very sensitive and reserved, but would open out in conversation when alone with me. As quite a young man he had worked at the building of the branch line from Oxford to Wolverhampton, via Worcester, the "O.W. and W.," or "Old Wusser and Wusser," as it was called, until taken over by the Great Western Railway. The latter, extending from London to Oxford, was, I believe, one of Brunell's masterly conceptions, being without a tunnel the whole way. But the new line had to pierce the Cotswolds before reaching the Vale of Evesham, and Tom had many yarns about the construction of the long Mickleton tunnel. Among them was a tradition of the cost, so great that guineas laid edgeways throughout its length would not pay for it.
In my time there was a splendid service of express trains running from London to Worcester without a stop, and coming downhill into the Vale, through the tunnel and towards Evesham, the speed approximated to a mile a minute. I was talking to one of my men, a hedger, working near the line which bounded a portion of my land, when one of the express trains came dashing along and passed us with a roar in a few seconds. "My word," said he, "I reckon that's a co-rider." I was puzzled, but presently it came to me that he meant "corridor"; he had probably seen the word in the local paper without having heard it pronounced.
It was a treat to watch Tom's magnificent physique when felling a big tree, stripped to his shirt, with sleeves rolled up, and his gleaming axe slowly raised and poised for a second above him before it fell with the gathered impetus of its own weight and his powerful stress. Biting time after time into the exact place aimed at, and at the most effective angle possible, the clean chips would fly in all directions until the necessary notch was cut and the basal outgrowths, close to the ground around the sturdy column, were reduced, so that the cross-cut saw could complete its downfall with a mighty crash. There is always something sad about the felling of an ancient tree; one feels it is a venerable creature that has passed long years of unchallenged dominion on the spot occupied, and one can scarcely avoid an idea of its intelligence and its silent record of passing generations, who have welcomed its shade at blazing summer noontides, or crept close to its warm touch for shelter from the winter's chilling blast and the hissing hail.
Tom was always the leader of my team of mowers when the grass was cut, for, with the large staff I employed on purpose for the all-important hop-gardens, I never wanted, till towards the end of my time, to make use of a machine. The steady swing of his scythe, with scarcely an apparent effort, the swish, as the swathe fell beneath its keen edge, and the final lift of the severed grasses at the end of the stroke, all in regular rhythmic action, were very fascinating to watch. At intervals came a halt for "whetting" the blade, and the musical sound of rubber (sharpening stone) against steel, equally adroitly accomplished, proved the artist at his work, with a delicacy of touch which, perhaps in different circumstances, might have produced the thrills with which Pachmann's velvet caress or Paderewski's refined expression enchant a vast and rapturous audience.
As a land-drainer, too, I loved to watch him standing in the slippery trench, with not an inch more soil moved than was necessary, lifting out the decreasing "draws," and leaving a bottom nicely rounded exactly to fit the pipes, and finally the methodical adjustment of each pipe, with the concluding tap to bring it close to the last one laid. Draining is an art which taxes the ability of the best of men, for it must be remembered that, like the links of a chain, its efficiency is no greater than that of its weakest part.
When I had to arrange for the harvesting of my first hop crop, it was necessary to find a man who could be entrusted with the critical work of drying the hops, and Tom was the man I chose. I had my kiln ready, constructed in an old malthouse, on the latest principles, and in time for the first crop. The kiln consisted of a space about 20 feet square, walled off at one end of the old building, but with entrances on the ground and first floors. Beneath, in the lower compartment, was the fireplace, a yard square, and 16 feet above was the floor on which the hops were dried. Anthracite coal was used for fuel, the fire being maintained day and night throughout the picking—the morning's picking drying between 1 p.m. and 12 midnight, and the afternoon's picking between 1 a.m. and 12 o'clock noon. Tom was therefore on duty for the whole twenty-four hours, with what snatches of sleep he could catch in the initial stage of each drying and at odd moments.
The process requires great skill and attention; at first he and I, with what little knowledge I had, puzzled it out together, he having had no previous experience, and night after night I sat up with him till the load came off the kiln at midnight. A slight excess of heat, or an irregular application of it, will spoil the hops, the principle being to raise the temperature, very gradually