Part 20 (1/2)

Undoubtedly it was due to Jeremy's influence that I came to appreciate this side of the matter. He also taught me to regard the tenant farmer as superior to all other varieties of his cla.s.s. I know it is wrong-headed, generalising from a particular case and all that--but I would rather be wrong-headed with Jeremy, who took a back-view of everything, than right-headed with some forward spirits who treat the land as a _corpus vile_ for political experiments. And what logical mind could resist arguments like the following, back-views though they be?

”It takes _two_, sir,” said Jeremy, ”for to handle the land. A n.o.bleman to own it, and a farmer to cultivate it. There's nothing that gives you _confidence_ like having a real gentleman behind you--and the Dook's a real gentleman if ever there was one. And you want confidence in farming--and that's what these 'ere Radicals don't see. I don't want none o' _their_ safeguards! Give me the Dook--he's safeguard enough for me! And what safeguard have you when fellers like Prendergast begin buying up the land? Look at _his_ tenants--not a real farmer among 'em, no, and not one as can make both ends meet. These little landlords are the men they ought to shoot at, not the big 'uns. Now isn't it a wonderful thing that my family and the Dook's has kept step with one another for a matter of two hundred years? Eight Dooks in that time and eight Jeremys--one Jeremy to each Dook! But who'll ever keep step with Prendergast? Who'll ever _want_ to? Why, I wouldn't be seen walking down the street with him, no, not if you was to give me a thousand pounds.

And if he was to offer me his best farm rent-free to-morrow, I'd tell him to go and boil hisself.

”No, sir,” he continued, ”it don't pay to own the land you farm; and don't you believe them as tells you it does. Leastways, it pays a sight better to farm under a good landlord. Them as can't make farming pay under a landlord, can't make it pay at all. Now look at me and then look at Charley Shott. Me and Charley started the same year, him with 400 acres of his own, and me with 380 acres under the Dook, rented all round at twenty-eight s.h.i.+llings an acre. And where are we both now after thirty years? Why, if Charley's land, and all he's made on it, and all he's put into it, were set at auction to-morrow, I could buy him up twice over! And me paying over five hundred pounds a year rent for thirty years, and him not paying a penny. How does that come about?

Well, you're not a farmer, and you wouldn't understand if I told you.

But I'll tell you one thing as perhaps you can understand. It hurts the land to break it up. And it _hurts_ the land still more to _sell_ it.

Now I dare say you never heard of that before.”

I confessed that I had not.

”Well, it's a fact. When you break land up it won't _keep_. It goes like rotten apples: first a bit goes rotten here and then a bit there; and the rottenness spreads and runs together. And as to _selling_, I tell you there's something in the land _as knows when you're goin' to sell it, and loses heart_. I've seen the same thing in 'osses. It takes the land longer to get used to a new master than it does a 'oss; and there's some land as never will.

”No, sir, I say again, if you want to make farming _pay_, take a farm on a big estate, one that's never been broke up and's never likely to be, one that's been in the same hands for hundreds o' years, one that's never been shaken up and messed with and slopped all over with lawyer's ink, and made sour with lawyer's lies. Never mind if the rent's a bit stiffish. Rent never bothered _me_.”

I ventured to dissent from these opinions, for I had given lectures on Political Economy, and I knew of at least four different theories of Rent all at variance with Jeremy's--and with one another. Perhaps I should have succeeded better had I known of only one. But, knowing of four, I may have become a little confused in my attempts to confute Farmer Jeremy. Not that this made very much difference. On all questions relating to the nature of land and its uses Jeremy was a mystic, and orthodox Political Economy was as futile to his mind as it was to Mr Ruskin's. Every position I took up was immediately stormed by the rejoinder, ”Ah, well, you're not a farmer, and you don't understand.” I could not help remembering that I had often been overthrown in more abstruse arguments by the same sort of answer. I might, indeed, have countered by saying, ”Ah, well, Mr Jeremy, you're not an economist, and _you_ don't understand.” But it occurred to me that the reply would be feeble.

”I tell you,” he went on, ”that good land _likes_ to be high-rented. It sort o' keeps it in humour. Land _likes_ to be owned by a gentleman, and keeps its heart up accordin'. Whenever the rent o' land goes down, the quality goes down too. I've noticed it again and again.”

I tried to indicate that this last statement was an inversion of cause and effect, but the argument made not the faintest impression on Mr Jeremy, who merely brushed away a fly that had settled on his nose, and continued:

”I never spoke to the Dook but once. I met him one morning riding to hounds with Lady Sybil and Lady Agatha. As soon as he sees me he trots his horse up to where I was standing and holds out his hand. 'Jeremy,'

says he, 'I want to shake hands with you. You're a splendid specimen of the British farmer.' 'Thank you, your Grace,' I says; 'and you're a splendid specimen of the British Dook,' for I was never afraid of speaking my mind to anyone. At that his Grace bursts out laughin', and so did Lady Sybil and Lady Agatha too. 'Let me introduce you to my two daughters,' says he. So he introduces me, and I can tell you I stood up to 'em like a man, though I did keep my hat in my hand all the time.

'Well, Jeremy,' says he, 'you've got your farm in tip-top condition'; and then he begins talking about putting up some new buildings, as me and the agent had been talking over before. 'We'll put 'em up next spring,' says his Grace; 'and remember, Jeremy, that in all that concerns the development of this farm you have me behind you.' 'I've never forgotten it, your Grace,' I says, 'and I never shall. And I'm not the only one who remembers it. _The land_ remembers it too, your Grace,'

I says. 'I hope it does, Jeremy,' says he, 'for I love it.' And I never see a young lady look prettier than Lady Agatha did when she heard her father say them words.”

I had heard this story so often from Farmer Jeremy, and always with the same reference to Lady Agatha at the end, that I was familiar with every word of it. He was growing old, and I believe that in the course of the year he managed to tell the story a hundred times over. ”I was coming home from market last Sat.u.r.day,” said he, ”and a lot of other farmers was in the same compartment with me. We begins talkin' about the Dook, and I happened to tell 'em about that time when I met his Grace with Lady Sybil and Lady Agatha. There was a chap sitting in one corner as didn't belong to our lot, and as soon as he hears the Dook's name mentioned he drops his paper and begins listening. Well, I never see such a rage anywhere as that man got into when I told 'em how I kept my hat in my hand while talking to the ladies. Regular insultin' is what he was; and I can tell you I never came nearer giving a man one in the eye than I did him. I believe I'd ha' done it if there'd been room in the carriage for him to put up his hands and make a square fight on it. I don't say as he weren't a plucky chap too; for there wasn't a man in the carriage as couldn't ha' knocked his head off with the flat of his hand, if he'd had a mind to. 'Look here, you fellows,' he says, 'you're a lot of blasted idiots, that's what you are. It's because of the besotted ignorance of men like you that England has the worst land-system in the world. Slaverin' and grovellin' before a lot o'

rotten Dooks--why, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves! I'll bet that Dook o' yours and his two painted gals was mounted on fine horses and dressed up to the nines.' 'Of course they was,' I says, 'and so they ought to be.' 'Well,' says he, 'who paid for the horses and the clothes--and the paint?' 'Here,' I says, jumping up from my seat, 'you drop the paint, or I'll pitch you out o' that winder.' 'Well, then,'

says he, 'who paid for the horses and the clothes?' 'I neither know nor care,' says I; 'so long as they was paid for, it's no business of mine or yourn who paid for 'em.' '_You paid for 'em_, you fool,' says he.

'Oh, indeed,' says I. 'And now, young man, perhaps you'll allow me to give you a word of advice.' 'Fire away,' says he. 'Well,' I says, 'the next time your missus has a was.h.i.+n' day, you just wait till she's made the copper 'ot, and then jump into it and boil yourself!'”

The ”chap” in the railway carriage was by no means the only person to whom Mr Jeremy addressed this drastic advice. It was his usual mode of clinching an argument when his instincts supported a conclusion to which his intelligence could not find the way. This method of arriving at truth was especially useful in regard to politics and theology, in both of which Mr Jeremy took a lively, or even violent, interest. Needless to say, his political aversions were of the strongest, and Mr Lloyd George was the statesman who had to bear the hottest flame of Jeremy's wrath.

More than once I have seen him fling his weekly paper on the floor with the words, ”I wish this 'ere Lloyd George would jump into the copper and boil hisself”; and on my remarking that I thought this a rather inhuman suggestion, he would wave his arm round the room, in a manner to indicate the entire Liberal Party, and say, ”I wish the whole lot on 'em would jump into coppers and boil themselves.” As to theology, I seldom dared to address a hint of my heresies to Mr Jeremy. But on my once saying to another person, in his presence, something to the effect that I did not believe in eternal d.a.m.nation, he quickly crossed over to where I was sitting, and, giving me a rather ugly dig with his powerful forefinger, said, ”Look here! You just jump into the copper and boil yourself.” A wise stupidity was the keynote of Mr Jeremy's life.

Another expression reserved for occasions when great emphasis was needed, was ”a finished specimen.” A thing, in Mr Jeremy's eyes, deserved this t.i.tle when its general condition was so bad that nothing worse of its kind could be conceived, and the expression accordingly was only used after the ordinary resources of descriptive language had given out. It was applied to persons as well as to things. Mr Lloyd George was, naturally, ”a finished specimen”: so was the German Emperor: so was Dr Crippen: so was a lady of uncertain reputation who ”had taken a cottage” in the neighbourhood. A wet harvest, a badly built hayrick, a measly pig, a feeble sermon by the curate, were all ”finished specimens.” Once when the curate, getting gravelled for lack of matter at the end of five minutes--for he was preaching _ex tempore_--abruptly concluded his sermon by promising to complete the subject next week, I heard Jeremy whisper to his wife, ”Well, _he_'s a finished specimen, that he is.” Nothing irritated the good man so much as an unfinished job, and the fact that a thing was unfinished was precisely what he meant to express when he called it ”a finished specimen.” A great deal of human language, especially philosophical language, seems to be constructed on the same principle.

Mr Jeremy was a regular church-goer. The Church in his eyes was part of the established order of Nature, on due observance of which the farmer's welfare depends, and merely extended into the next world those desirable results which sound instincts, punctuality, and ”putting your back into it” produced in this. On week-days Mr Jeremy farmed the broad acres of the ”Dook”; on Sundays he farmed Palestine, and occasionally drove a straight furrow clean across the back of the Universe. To both operations he applied the same methods, the same instincts, the same ideas. I confess that I have often smiled with the air of a superior person when listening to a highly trained Cathedral choir proclaiming to the strains of great music that ”Moab was their washpot”; but when Mr Jeremy repeated the words in the village church I felt that he spoke the truth, and I went away with a clearer conception of Moab than I have ever gained from the works of Kuenen or Cheyne. ”Moab,” I reflected, ”can be no other than the little field on the hillside, where Jeremy washes his sheep in the pool behind the willows.” Again, I was morally certain that if Jeremy had lived in the neighbourhood of Edom he would have ”cast out his shoe” upon that country, accurately aiming the missile at the head of any rascally Edomite who happened to be prowling about with a rabbit-snare in his pocket. So too when he shouted ”Mana.s.seh is mine”--he always shouted the Psalms--I was sure that Mana.s.seh really was his, in a tenant-farmer way of speaking, and that next Thursday he would begin to rip up Mana.s.seh with his great steam plough, and reap in due course a crop of forty bushels to the acre, paying the ”Dook” a high rent for the privilege. Nor was Jeremy making any idle boast when he thundered out his further intentions, which were ”to divide Sichem,” ”to mete out the valley of Succoth,” and ”to triumph” over Philistia. All this was Pragmatism of the purest water; you were sure he would keep his promise to the letter; you were glad for Sichem and Succoth, which were to be ”divided” and ”meted out,” though perhaps a little sorry for the Philistines, who were to be ”triumphed over,” that a man like Jeremy should have undertaken the business; but you recognised that no better man for the job could be found anywhere than he. To be sure, Mr Jeremy, although he would have gladly boiled the whole Liberal Party in coppers, was much too tender-hearted to wish that anybody's little ones should be dashed against the stones; but I believe that in his innermost thought he launched the words against ”them tarnation sparrers” and ”that plague o' rats.” On the whole, no one who listened to Mr Jeremy's repet.i.tion of these Psalms could doubt their entire appropriateness as a religious exercise for men such as he, or refrain from hoping that they would never be expunged from the Book of Common Prayer until the last British farmer had gone to church for the last time.

So too with the Creeds. I believed every one of them as recited by Mr Jeremy, and I found the Athanasian the most convincing of them all. The Sundays set down for the use of that Creed--and its use was never omitted in our parish--were the most serious Sundays of the year to Mr Jeremy, and the vigour of his voice and his att.i.tude, and the fervour of his partic.i.p.ation, made a spectacle to be remembered. I wish William James might have seen it before he wrote his _Varieties of Religions Experience_; it would have given him a new chapter. At the very first words Jeremy joined in like a trained sprinter starting for a race; and though the clergyman rattled through the clauses as fast as he could p.r.o.nounce, or misp.r.o.nounce, the syllables, the farmer headed him by a word or two from the very first, gradually increasing his lead as the race proceeded until towards the end he was a full sentence to the good.

It was evident that to Jeremy's mind, and perhaps to the clergyman's also, a subtle relation existed between the truth of the Creed and the speed with which it could be rendered. Long before the end was in sight, and while Jeremy was still battling with various ”incomprehensibles,”

the rest of the compet.i.tors had retired from sheer exhaustion; the children were munching sweets; the lads and la.s.ses were ogling one another at the back of the church; Mrs Jeremy was staring in front of her, wondering perhaps if the careless Susan would remember that onion sauce _always_ went with a leg of mutton on Sundays; while Lady Agatha and Lady Sybil--I grieve to record this, but my historical conscience compels me--sat down. As to those of us who remained attentive to what was going on, our confidence in Catholic Truth gradually took the form of a certainty that the farmer would come in first and the clergyman be nowhere. So it always proved. Standing in the pew behind that of Jeremy, I could see the muscles of his mighty back working up and down beneath the broadcloth of his Sunday coat; and as I looked from him to the easily winded gentleman from Pusey House who was running against him in the chancel, I could not help reflecting how ridiculous, nay, how unsportsmanlike, it was to allow two men so ill matched to compete for the same event. This, no doubt, was the first symptom that, in spite of the standing att.i.tude, I was going to sleep. But before it could happen I was suddenly brought to my senses by the _fortissimo e prestissimo_ of Jeremy's conclusion. ”He _cannot_ be saved,” he roared out, banging his prayer-book down on the book-rest, with a defiant look around him, as though the whole Liberal Party were in church. ”He _cannot_ be saved,”--and visions of all sorts of people boiling in coppers filled the mental eye.

Jeremy, for a farmer, was the most outrageous optimist I have ever met.

He never grumbled, save at politicians, and the worst weather could hardly disconcert him. ”You can always turn a bit o' bad weather to good account--if you put your back into it. Yes, it's been a _wet_ season, no doubt, but not what I should call a _bad_ season. It's true we've made but little hay, and that not good; but the meadows isn't dried up as they was last year, and there'll be feed for the stock in the open most of the winter. I bought fifty new head o' stock last Wednesday--bought 'em cheap of a man as got frightened--and they'll be well fattened by Christmas.” Serious setbacks, of course, often occurred; but Jeremy, unlike most of his kind, was not the man to talk about them. ”What I believe in,” he said, ”is not only keeping your own heart up, but helping your neighbours to keep up theirs. I've no patience with all this 'ere grumbling and growling. Of course, a person has a lot to put up with in farming; but it doesn't do a person no good to be always thinking about that. Pleasant thoughts goes a long way in making money.

And I tell you there's money to be made in farming, let folks say what they will. What farmers want is not for Parliament to help 'em, but for Parliament to leave 'em alone. That's why I can't stand this 'ere Liberal Government. Why can't they stop messing wi' things--messing wi'