Arthur Herbert Savory

“ The shrinking oak in dread of an enemy, and the oak prepared to offer a stout resistance. The hopeful oak in the prime of life, and the oak that totters in desolate and crabbed old age. The oak that enjoys in middle age the good things of life, with well-fed and rounded symmetry; and the oak that suggests decrepitude, with rough exterior, and a life-experience of hardship; the sturdy oak, the ambitious oak, the self-contained oak, and so on, through every phase of character. No other tree is so human or so expressive, and no other tree bespeaks such fortitude and endurance. ”

“ There are people who cannot see in an old Worcester tea-cup and saucer the eighteenth-century beauty, fastidiously sipping, what she called in the same language as the Aldington cottager of to-day, her dish of "tay." There are people who regard with indifference an ancient chair, except as an object to be sat upon, and who fail to realize its historical charm, or even the credit due to the maker of a piece of furniture that has survived two hundred and fifty spring cleanings. ”

“ There is, of course, the danger, too, that children will not recognize the difference between the female of the Orange Tip butterfly, which is practically colourless, and the cabbage whites, and it would be worse than a crime to destroy so joyous and welcome a creature, whose advent is one of the pleasantest signs that summer is nigh at hand. I have watched these fairy sprites dancing along the hedge sides at Aldington year by year, and in May they were extraordinarily abundant here, happily coursing round and round my meadow, and chasing each other in the sunshine. ”

“ On the final day of the picking they expect to be allowed to indulge in a good deal of horse-play, the great joke being suddenly to upset an unpopular individual into a crib among the hops. Shrieks of laughter greet the disappearance of the unlucky one, of whom nothing is to be seen except a struggling leg protruding from the crib.
The last operation in the hop garden is stacking the poles, and burning the bine, a most inflammable material which makes a prodigious blaze. As the men watch the leaping flames the same remark is made year after year—"fire is a good servant, but a bad master." ”

“ Throughout all the available space not so occupied, on either side of the two arms of the street, and again behind the cottages themselves, beautiful old orchards, chiefly of apple-trees, formed an unsurpassed setting both when the blossom was out in pink and white, or the fruit was ripening in gold and crimson, and even in winter, when the grey limbs and twisted trunks of the bare trees admitted the level rays of the sun. ”

“ Besides the fancied pageantry of the roads there are the natural objects of the woods, the lanes, and the fields; the blossoming hawthorn and the wild roses trailing from the hedges, the hares and rabbits, the birds, the butterflies, and the flowers; sturdy teams with the time-honoured ploughs and harrows, the sowing of the seed, the young gleaming corn, the scented hayfields or the golden harvest; every man at his honourable labour, happy children dashing out of school; noble timber, hazel coppices, grey old villages ”

“ It is, in fact, ridiculous for townspeople, lawyers, and manufacturers to legislate for the labour of the farm; they do not understand that indoor labour in the workshop or factory, under regular conditions and with unvarying materials, is totally different from labour out of doors, in constantly changing conditions of season, weather, and the resulting crops dealt with. An old maxim of the Worcestershire labourer who, without a fixed place, took on piece-work at specially busy times, will confirm this: "Go to a good farmer for wheat-hoeing, and to a bad one for harvesting." ”

“ The holly is only seen as garden hedges in the more sandy parishes of Worcestershire, but here in the Forest it is a splendid feature, growing to a great size and height. In winter its bright shining leaves reflecting the sunlight enliven the woods, so that we never get the bare and cheerless look of places where the elm and the whitethorn hedge dominate the landscape. ”

“ A really Bacchanalian presence is the only one that should be tolerated in a cider-maker; the lean and hungry character is quite out of place amidst the fragrance of the crushed apples, and the generous liquor running from the press.
The cider-maker is always allowed a liberal quantity of last year's produce, on the principle of "thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn"—a principle that should always be recognized in the labourer's hire, and one which is too often forgotten by the public in its estimate of the necessities of the farmer himself. ”

“ There are few pleasanter sights about farm premises than to see, as the short winter day is drawing to an end, and the twilight is stealing around the ricks and buildings, a nicely sheltered yard full of contented cattle deeply bedded down in clean bright wheat straw, and settling themselves comfortably for the night; and, when one pulls the bed-clothes up to one's ears, one can go to sleep thinking happily that they too are enjoying a refreshing sleep. Cattle and sheep can stand severe cold, if they are sheltered from bitter winds and have dry quarters in which to lie ”

“ The Manor House had been added to and largely altered, but many years had brought it into harmony with its surroundings, while Nature had dealt kindly with its colouring, so that it carried the charm of long use and continuous human habitation. Behind the house an old walled garden, with flower-bordered grass walks under arches of honeysuckle and roses, gave vistas of an ample mill-pond at the lower end, forming one of the garden boundaries. ”

“ If I had only filled my barns with Jacobean and Stuart oak and walnut, William and Mary, and Queen Ann marquetry, and Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite mahogany, instead of wheat for an unsympathetic British public, and at the end of my time at Aldington offered a few of the least interesting specimens for sale by auction, I might still have carried away a houseful of treasures which would have cost me less than nothing. ”

“ Cycling to me is a very easy and pleasant exercise, but it is far more than that; it is like passing through an endless picture-gallery filled with masterpieces of form and colour. The roads of England not only present these delights to the physical sense, but they stir the imagination with historic visions from the earliest times. There are the ancient camps, now silent and deserted, which become at the bidding of fancy peopled with the unkempt and savage British, and later with their well-disciplined and well-equipped Roman conquerers: archers and men in armour appear ”

“ He is a man with whom the world has gone wrong, a sufferer, perhaps, from some disaster which has become an obsession. He views everything with distorted eyesight; nothing pleases him, and he wants to put everybody right. He cherishes a perpetual grievance against some individual or clique for a fancied slight, and goes about trying to stir up ill-feeling among the ignorant by malicious insinuations. In former times he was an adept at "parson-baiting" at the annual Easter vestry meeting, when he would air his grievance against the Vicar of the parish or any person in authority. ”

“ From July 18 to 22 I was at Thorney Hill in the New Forest, some seven miles behind Christchurch. Owing to the abnormal drought the bogs and bog-streams at the foot of the hill westward were all but dry; a dense mist, however, sometimes rose from them at night. On July 19, and the three following nights, the Will-o'-the-wisps were in great form over the bog. They were like small balls of bluish fire, which projected themselves with hops and jerks across the most inaccessible parts of the bog, starting always, so far as could be told, from where a little stagnant moisture still remained. ”

“ One of the finest avenues of elms I know, is to be seen at the Palace of the Bishop of Winchester at Farnham in Surrey, but the land is quite exceptionally good, and in the palmy days of hop-growing, the adjoining fields commanded a rent of £20 an acre for what is known as the "Heart land of Farnham," where hops of the most superlative quality were grown. When the dappled deer are grouped under this noble avenue, in the light and shade beneath the elms, they form an old English picture of country life not to be surpassed. ”

“ And I was fortunate in seeing a kingfisher dart upon the water, hover for an instant like a hawk-moth over honeysuckle, and, having caught a small gudgeon, fly away with it in its beak. They, like the martin, always perch on leafless wood, so that the leaves shall not impede their flight when pouncing upon a fish, and no doubt this is the reason they sometimes perch on the top joint of the rod of a hidden fisherman. ”

“ The Worcester Pearmain is so highly decorative, with its large pale pink and white blossoms in spring and its glowing red fruit in autumn, that it would be worth growing for these qualities alone in the amateur's garden, and in any case it is an apple that nobody should be without. ”

“ It is not unusual to see villagers, as married couples, complete contrasts to each other in appearance and character—one fat and jolly, the other thin and miserable; one happy and contented, the other grumbling and morose; one open-hearted and generous, the other close and parsimonious. In matrimony people are said to choose their opposites, and possibly, as time goes on, the difference in their appearance and dispositions becomes still more definitely developed.
The labourer understands sarcasm and makes use of it himself, but irony is often lost upon him. ”

“ The thrashing-machine is the ultimate test of the yield or cast of the wheat crop, and it seems to have something itself to say about it. For when the straw is short the cast is generally good, and vice versa. In the first case the machine runs evenly, and gives out a contented and cheerful hum, but in the second it remonstrates with intermittent grunts and groans. Even when the yield is pretty good, the voice of the machine is not nearly so encouraging to the imaginative farmer, when prices are low, as when prices are up. ”

“ As old fashions were superseded, as oak gave way to walnut, and walnut to Spanish mahogany, the out-of-date furniture found its way to the smaller farm-houses and cottages, in which it descended from generation to generation. Now that the cottages have been ransacked by dealers and collectors, the treasures have not only been absorbed by wealthy townspeople, but are finding their way with those of impoverished landowners and occupiers to the millionaire mansions on the other side of the Atlantic. ”

“ My bailiff always said that sixpennyworth of cider would do more work than a shilling in cash. He was undoubtedly correct, and, moreover, the quantity worth sixpence in the farm cider store would cost a shilling or more at the public-house, to supply an equivalent in alcohol, and valuable time would be lost in fetching it. It is the alcohol that commends it to the agricultural labourer more than any consideration of thirst, and no one can see its effect without the conviction that the men find it not only stimulating, but supporting. ”

“ She was a hard-working woman, and came over to my house once a week for some years to bake the bread, made from my own wheat ground at the village mill. It was somewhat dark in colour, owing to the most nutritious parts of the grain being retained in the flour, but it was deliciously sweet and kept fresh for the whole week. I only wish everyone could enjoy the same sort; the modern bread is poor stuff by comparison, and its lack of nutritive value is undoubtedly the cause of much of the poor physique of our rural and urban population at the present time. ”

“ The shade of the beech is so dense that grass will not grow beneath it; it gradually kills even holly, which is comparatively flourishing under the oak. The beech woods in the Forest are thus quite free from undergrowth, and the noble trees with their smooth ash-coloured stems can be seen in perfection, giving a cathedral aisle effect, which is erroneously said to have suggested the massive columns and groined roofs of Gothic architecture. ”

“ I may explain that the fields of the good farmer are clean and nearly free from weeds, so that hoeing is a comparatively light job; but the same, or nearly the same, price per acre is paid by the bad farmer, whose corn is overrun with weeds, entailing much more time and harder work. On the other hand, the good farmer's wheat crop is much heavier than that of the bad, and, the prices for cutting being again very similar, more money per diem can be earned at harvest on the farm of the latter. ”

“ After a long day out of doors in the natural beauty of the country, who shall say that the labourer's appetite for his evening meal, his pipe of tobacco beside his bright fireside, and his detachment from the outside world, do not afford him as great or greater enjoyment than the elaborate luxury of the millionaire, with his innumerable distractions and responsibilities? ”

“ They soon became very quick and expert at the tying, and their well-worn wedding-rings, telling of a busy life, would flash brightly in the sunshine as they tenderly coaxed the brittle bines round the base of the poles, securing them with the rush tied in a special slip-knot, so that it easily expanded as the bine enlarged.
Women are splendid at all kinds of light farm work whenever deftness and gentle touch are required, such as hop-tying and picking, or gathering small fruit like currants, raspberries, and strawberries ”

“ In the days before the railway was made between Alton and Farnham the old bailiff on the Will Hall Farm at Alton, who, though quite an elderly man, had never visited London, expressed a wish to visit it for once in his life. His master gave him a holiday and paid his expenses, and the old man drove the ten miles to Farnham Station. Arrived in London he started to walk over Waterloo Bridge, but the further he got the more astonished he became at the traffic, and began to wonder what "fair" all the people could be going to. ”