The Grange

“ The ancestral home of the Spences, The Grange, Scoresby, Lincolnshire, stands half a mile from the road. You reach it by an avenue of chestnuts, and in Patrick's time when the door opened you found yourself in a hall hung with trophies of the chase; the whole house was, in fact, a museum. Never in any man had the passion for collection burned more acutely than in the owner of The Grange, or shown itself in a more extravagant fashion. ”

“ Among the young her beauty excited envy, and they virtuously rejoiced that her pride would yet bring her sorrow. All, young and old, loved an intrigue for itself; and would not have spoiled their sport for the world. The servants at the Grange carried their tales to the village, and the village gossips drew together in the fields, on the road, by the pump, at cottage doors, to roll the sweet morsel of scandal under their tongues. ”

“ I don't think I should want to cut down trees there, William. Whatever distance Barton's Close may be from the Grange, the lake is certainly over a mile. You can't turn the whole place into a garden. As it is, it's overweighted. You've got to consider the future. It would have been all right if poor Hugo had lived. He'd have succeeded me here, and I suppose Norman would have gone on living at the Grange after you. ”

“ It was the grange that had made this revolt possible. This general intelligence and self-cognizance was the direct result of the work of the grange. It had brought the farmers together, and had made them acquainted with their own men, their own leaders, and when they came together a few days later, under the open sky, like the Saxon thanes of old, there was a spirit of rebellion in the air that made every man look his neighbor in the face with exultation. ”

“ Not for worlds would we have left the Grange house, which was then our summer residence, after nightfall, and, skirting the hill by the old deserted burial-ground, venture down the little glen, gloomy with the shade of hazels—cross the burn by the bridge above the Caldron pool—and finally gaze upon the loch all tranquil in the glory of the stars! Not all the fish that ever struggled on a night-line-and there were prime two-pounders, and no end of eels, in the loch—would have tempted us to so terrible a journey. ”

“ The Granges, however, are increasing a pleasant and wholesome social element which is beyond price, and all winter you meet sleighs full of rosy-cheeked families, driving to the Hall for Grange Meeting, or Sunday Meeting, or for the weekly dance.
Many of the farm people are large-minded enough to do their work well, and still keep above and on top of it ”

“ The house I have been describing was still called The Grange, and such as I have stated had been its original destination. The long building had been the real grange or barn of a neighboring abbey; the taller building had been added afterward for the convenience of the abbot's bailiff. When the monasteries were suppressed by the arch plunderer Henry VIII., we all know how many and how great were those who shared in the pickings of the defunct fowl of Rome. The Grange and the farm attached to it fell to the lot of a nobleman in the neighborhood, together with much other valuable property. ”

“ Eastward of the gatehouse were ranged the empty stables, the empty byres, the empty pig-pens and barns—for the Grange had farmed its own produce in days gone by—and beyond these, in a bastion of the wall, stood the columbarium, or circular dovecote built of stone, which contained within it a revolving ladder, like a cheval-de-frise on end, used for reaching the birds where they might rest in any of the rows of little cells with which the whole surface of the interior was chambered. ”

“ If one farmer's wife is a fine lady, why not another? Do not even the servant girls at the Grange come out twenty times finer than people who have a canvas bag full of sovereigns at home, and many such bags at the bank? So that the Grange people, though they pay their way handsomely, and plough deep and manure lavishly, and lead the van of agriculture, are not, perhaps, an unmixed good. ”

“ For it is not at all an exaggeration to assert that a positive revolution often comes about from the planting of a Grange in a neighborhood where no such organization has ever existed. It finds most of the women diffident, many of them with restricted views, few of them with the instinct for social service developed beyond the needs of friendly neighbors. In the Grange these women find new acquaintances, learn the power of concerted action, meet the responsibility of office, get to their feet for a few words—unheard-of courage! ”

“ While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups to their picnics in the woods; while the Goddess of Liberty, Uncle Sam, Columbia, and the proud States lunched grandly in the Grange Hall with distinguished guests and scarred veterans of two wars, the lonely man drove, and drove, and drove through silent woods and dull, sleepy villages, never alighting to replenish his wardrobe or his stock of swapping material. ”

“ On the right, facing the grass plots and bedded in trees stands a very pretty residence, quite spacious inside, and containing every comfort and elegance, presided over by a charming hostess and her daughters. Mrs. L., the most amiable of ladies, spares no fatigue in showing you all that can interest, and there is a great deal to see at the Grange. The parlor windows look on a lawn skirted with various trees, where many a wild bird makes its nest, and looking outwards, and listening to their varied notes, you could fancy yourself in a deep wood. ”

“ You can do a good deal. And if you've got big trees you can do practically everything. The misfortune about the Grange is that there are no big trees immediately around the house. If there had been I should have aimed at something of this sort. I could have got the lawn all right. It's the best sort of garden to look out on—an expanse of lawn and shady trees—quiet and green and peaceful. You're quite right, Edmund. With all I've done, and all I've spent on my garden, it's fussy compared to this. ”

“ The Grange is situated in the loneliest part of England, the marsh country of the fens to which civilization has still hardly penetrated. The inhabitants, of whom there are only one and a half to the square mile, live here and there among the fens and eke out a miserable existence by frog-fishing and catching flies. ”

“ Besides the Grange there is a small farmhouse, or bailiff’s house, in the south-west corner of the estate. On the north the boundary consists of moorlands, to the east (as has been seen) of the beach, to the west and south of a public road. At the end of the Grange walls this road turns to the right, inland, and passes by Fillby village; it then develops into the highroad to Easthorpe with its market, shops, and station, ten miles away. ”

“ The Grange certainly contained ample space for interests of every description. The old farm buildings made sheds for carpentry and wood-carving, or any other work that was too messy for the schoolrooms. Under the direction of Miss Gibbs, some of the elder girls were turning the contents of a wood pile into a set of rustic garden seats, and other industrious spirits had begun to plait osierwithes into baskets that were destined for blackberry picking in the autumn. The house itself was roomy enough to allow hobbies to overflow. ”

“ Although the Grange is primarily a farmers' organization, yet where the local grange meets in the village, and particularly in the older states, a considerable number of the members are village people, so that the Grange represents the life of the whole community. On the other hand, in many neighborhoods which are at some distance from a village center, the Grange hall may be located in the open country, its membership is composed wholly of farmers, and it is solely a class organization. ”

“ Now a grey shadow steals over the land, the bubbling life is chilled from the waters, and they rattle black and harsh against the cobble-stones. But on Grange fell the russet bracken is bathed in ephemeral sunshine. The shadow in the air grows darker, the distance is obscured with the grime of rain. The nearer hills, the fields, the town, are blotted out ere the full fury of the squall shakes our window and shrieks among the island trees. ”

“ A little removed stood the huge old granary that had given the place its name, but it, too, looked forlorn, ruinous, and empty. “The Oak Grange,” said Carthew. “People say that once it was a great haunt of elves and fairies, and that they are yet seen of moonlight nights, dancing around yonder oak. They dance—but every seven years they pay a tithe of their company to hell.” ”

“ Sir William ignored this. "How jolly and peaceful it is here," he said. "Really, I don't know a more delicious garden than this anywhere. It would take a hundred years to produce just this effect at the Grange, though I've spent pots of money over the gardens there."
"Gardening with a golden spade," said his brother. "You can't do everything with money." ”

“ La Granja, or the Grange, is a royal country seat, situated amongst pine forests on the other side of the Guadarrama hills, about twelve leagues distant from Madrid. To this place the Queen Regent Christina had retired, in order to be aloof from the discontent of the capital, and to enjoy rural air and amusements in this celebrated retreat, a monument of the taste and magnificence of the first Bourbon who ascended the throne of Spain. ”

“ But tell me of yourself—are you in the grange movement?"
"Well, not exactly, but I've helped all I could."
"What is the condition of the grange in your county?"
"It seems to be going down."
She was silent for some time. Her face saddened with deep thought. "Yes, I'm afraid it is. The farmers can't seem to hold together. Strange, aint it? Other trades and occupations have their organizations and stand by each other, but the farmer can't seem to feel his kinship. Well, I suppose he must suffer greater hardships before he learns his lesson. But God help the poor wives while he learns! ”

“ It's a lovely world, and I think you must enjoy it more when you're young."
The next day there was some coming and going between the Hall and the Grange, but the shadow of immediate departure lay over the Grange, and it was impossible not to take it as a departure more significant than it had hitherto appeared. Lady Eldridge might come down again for a day or two to finish her packings away for the winter. Norman said that he would [Pg 324] come down before he went back to Cambridge. ”

“ It seemed as if the troubles that had been darkening her home life increasingly of late had all been swept away, for she had no doubt then that her father and her uncle would immediately compose their differences, and the close intimacy between the two families would go on as before. It had not occurred to her that the Grange would be completely unoccupied. Her uncle and aunt had often been away, for many weeks together, and she had sometimes been with them, in the South of France or in Scotland, or elsewhere. It would be fun to go to the house in Suffolk ”

“ Mainwaring, with a glance at her husband, dropped the subject.
The Grange was a sort of an ogre’s castle to the simple lady, and not quite without reason. There is in most quiet country neighborhoods a house with this sort of reputation, where there lives a wicked man who does not come regularly to church, and who goes to bed and gets up again at unorthodox hours, and whose guests do the same and worse things besides; where there is a tribe of servants who find it difficult to obtain places in the neighborhood on leaving ”

“ When I die, and you or Norman come here, Cynthia and the girls will have to live at the Grange. It's much too big a place for them already. I dare say you'd get a big rent for it; but that's not what they'll want. They would have had enough to live on there as it used to be; but with the way things are going now it'll be a place that will want a lot of keeping up. It will want a good deal more keeping up than this."
"Of course you're right to think about the future, old fellow." ”

“ and the full, mellow flow of the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music about the Grange when the trees were in leaf. ”

“ It's the enlarging and enlarging at the Grange that has become objectionable. It has gone beyond all reasonable grounds already. All very well, as long as William is [Pg 71] there, and treats it as a toy on which to spend his money. But if anything happens, it will be a white elephant—a big house with no land to it, which nobody else is likely to want, and no longer any good as a second house on the place, which it has always been before. You and the girls couldn't live there if anything happened to me. ”

“ The nearest approach to it is the Grange, which, contrary to a popular notion, is in a prosperous condition, with a really large influence upon the social, financial, educational, and legislative interests of the farming class. It has had a steady growth during the past ten years, and is a quiet but powerful factor in rural progress. The Grange is perhaps too conservative in its administrative policy. It has not at least succeeded in converting to its fold the farmers of the great Mississippi Valley. ”

“ SIR WILLIAM KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE
I. THE KIRKCALDYS In the parish of Kinghorn, on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth, a farm-house known as the Grange still marks the spot where, three centuries ago, the ancestral seat of the Kirkcaldys stood. The greater part of the present structure is comparatively modern ”