It is pleasant, on a sunny day to walk through a field of wheat when the footpath is bordered on either side by the ripening crop, without the intervention of hedge or fence. Such a footpath, narrow, but well kept, leads from a certain country churchyard to the highway road, and passes on the way a wicket gate in a thick evergreen shrubbery which surrounds the vicarage lawn and gardens. This afternoon the wheat stands still and upright, without a motion, in the burning sunshine, for the sun, though he has sloped a little from his highest meridian altitude, pours an even fiercer beam than at the exact hour of noon. The shadeless field is exposed to the full glare of the brilliant light. There are no trees in the field itself, the hedges are cut low and trimmed to the smallest proportions, and are devoid of timber; and, as the ground is high and close to the hills, all the trees in sight are beneath, and can be overlooked. Whether in sunshine or storm there is no shelter--no medium; the wind rushes over with its utmost fury, or the heat rests on it undisturbed by the faintest current. Yet, sultry as it is, the footpath is a pleasant one to follow.
The wheat ears, all but ripe--to the ordinary eye they are ripe, but the farmer is not quite satisfied--rise to the waist or higher, and tempt the hand to pluck them. Butterflies flutter over the surface, now descending to some flower hidden beneath, now resuming their joyous journey. There is a rich ripe feeling in the very atmosphere, the earth is yielding her wealth, and a delicate aroma rises from her generous gifts. Far as the eye can see, the rolling plains and slopes present various tints of yellow--wheat in different stages of ripeness, or of different kinds; oats and barley--till the hedges and woods of the vale conceal the farther landscape on the one hand and the ridge of the hills upon the other.
Nothing conveys so strong an impression of substantial wealth as the view of wheat-fields. A diamond ornament in a window may be ticketed as worth so many hundreds of pounds; but the glittering gem, and the sum it represents, seem rather abstract than real. But the wheat, the golden wheat, is a great fact that seizes hold of the mind; the idea comes of itself that it represents solid wealth.
The tiles of the vicarage roof--all of the house visible above the shrubbery--look so hot and dry in the glaring sunshine that it does not seem possible for vegetation to exist upon them; yet they are tinted with lichen. The shrubbery has an inviting coolness about it--the thick evergreens, the hollies on which the berries are now green, the cedars and ornamental trees planted so close together that the passer-by cannot see through, must surely afford a grateful shade--a contrast with the heat of the wheat-field and the dust of the highway below. Just without the wicket gate a goat standing upon his hind legs, his fore legs placed against the palings, is industriously nibbling the tenderest leaves of the shrubs and trees which he can reach. Thus extended to his full length he can reach considerably higher than might be supposed, and is capable of much destruction. Doubtless he has got out of bounds.
Inside the enclosure the reverend gentleman himself reclines in an arm-chair of cane-work placed under the shade of the verandah, just without the glass door or window opening from the drawing-room upon the lawn. His head has fallen back and a little to one side, and an open book lies on his knee; his soft felt hat is bent and crumpled; he has yielded to the heat and is slumbering. The blinds are partly down the window, but a glimpse can be obtained of a luxurious carpet, of tables in valuable woods and inlaid, of a fine piano, of china, and the thousand and one nicknacks of highly civilised life. The reverend gentleman's suit of black, however, is not new; it is, on the contrary, decidedly rusty, and the sole of one of his boots, which is visible, is much worn. Over his head the roses twine round the pillars of the verandah, and there is a _parterre_ of brilliant flowers not far from his feet.
His wife sits, a few yards distant, under a weeping ash, whose well-trained boughs make a perfect tent, and shield her from the sun. She has a small table before her, and writing materials, and is making notes with the utmost despatch from some paper or journal. She is no longer young, and there are marks of much care and trouble on her forehead; but she has still a pleasing expression upon her features, her hands are exquisitely white, and her figure, once really good, retains some of the outline that rendered it beautiful. Wherever you saw her you would say, That is a lady. But her dress, tasteful though it be, is made of the cheapest material, and looks, indeed, as if it had been carefully folded away last summer, and was now brought out to do duty a second time.
The slow rumble of waggon wheels goes down the road, close to the lawn, but concealed by the trees, against whose boughs the sheaves of the load rustle as they go past. Wealth rolling by upon the waggon, wealth in the well-kept garden, in the smart lawn, in the roses, the bright flowers, the substantial well-furnished house, the luxurious carpet, and the china; wealth, too, all around in the vast expanse of ripening wheat. He has nothing to do but to slumber in the cane chair and receive his tithe of the harvest. She has nothing to do but to sit under the shadow of the weeping ash and dream dreams, or write verses. Such, at least, might be the first impression.
The publication from which she is so earnestly making notes is occupied with the management of bees, and she is so busy because the paper is only borrowed, and has to be returned. Most of the papers and books that come to the vicarage have to be hastily read for the same reason. Mrs. F---- is doing her very best and hardest to increase the Rev. F----'s income--she has tried to do so for some years, and despite repeated failures is bravely, perhaps a little wearily, still trying. There is not much left for her to experiment with. The goat surreptitiously nibbling the valuable shrubs outside the palings is a member of a flock that once seemed to promise fair. Goats at one time (she was persuaded) were the means of ready wealth--they could live anywhere, on anything (the shrubs to wit), and yielded such rich milk; it far surpassed that of the shorthorn; there was the analysis to prove it! Such milk must of course be worth money, beside which there were the kids, and the cheese and butter.
Alas! the goats quickly obtained so evil a reputation, worse than that of the rabbits for biting off the shooting vegetation, that no one would have them on the land. The milk was all the analysis declared it, but in that outlying village, which did not contain two houses above the quality of a farmstead, there was no one to buy it. There was a prejudice against the butter which could not be got over; and the cheese--well, the cheese resembled a tablet of dark soap. Hodge would not eat it at a gift; he smelt it, picked a morsel off on the tip of his clasp knife, and threw it aside in contempt. One by one the goats were got rid of, and now but two or three remained; she could not make up her mind to part with all, for living creatures, however greatly they have disappointed, always enlist the sympathies of women.
Poultry was the next grand discovery--they ate their heads off, refused to lay eggs, and, when by frequent purchase they became numerous and promised to pay, quietly died by the score, seized with an epidemic. She learnt in visiting the cottagers how profitable their allotment gardens were to them, and naturally proceeded to argue that a larger piece of ground would yield proportionately larger profit if cultivated on the same principle. If the cottagers could pay a rent for an acre which, in the aggregate, was three times that given by the ordinary farmer, and could even then make a good thing of it, surely intelligence and skill might do the same on a more extended scale. How very foolish the farmers were! they might raise at least four times the produce they did, and they might pay three times the rent. As the vicar had some hundred and fifty acres of glebe let at the usual agricultural rent, if the tenants could be persuaded or instructed to farm on the cottager's system, what an immense increase it would be to his income! The tenants, however, did not see it. They shrugged their shoulders, and made no movement The energetic lady resolved to set an example, and to prove to them that they were wrong.
She rented an acre of arable land (at the side of the field), giving the tenant a fair price for it. First it had to be enclosed so as to be parted off from the open field. The cost of the palings made the vicar wince; his lady set it duly down to debit. She planted one-half potatoes, as they paid thirty pounds per acre, and on the rest put in hundreds of currant bushes, set a strawberry bed and an asparagus bed, on the principle that luxuries of that kind fetch a high price and occupy no more space than cabbages. As the acre was cultivated entirely by the spade, the cost of the labour expended upon it ran up the figures on the debit side to an amount which rather startled her. But the most dispiriting part of the commencement was the length of time to wait before a crop came. According to her calculations that represented so much idle capital sunk, instead of being rapidly turned over. However, she consoled herself with the pig-sty, in which were half a dozen animals, whose feeding she often personally superintended.
The potatoes failed, and did not pay for the digging; the currant bushes were blighted; the strawberries were eaten by snails, and, of course, no asparagus could be cut for three years; a little item, this last, quite overlooked. The pigs returned exactly the sum spent upon them; there was neither profit nor loss, and there did not appear any chance of making a fortune out of pork. The lady had to abandon the experiment quite disheartened, and found that, after all her care and energy, her books showed a loss of fifteen pounds. It was wonderful it was not more; labour was so expensive, and no doubt she was cheated right and left.
She next tried to utilise her natural abilities, and to turn her accomplishments to account. She painted; she illuminated texts; she undertook difficult needlework of various kinds, in answer to advertisements which promised ample remuneration for a few hours' labour. Fifteen hours' hard work she found was worth just threepence, and the materials cost one shilling: consequently she laboriously worked herself poorer by ninepence.
Finally, she was studying bees, which really seemed to hold out some prospect of success. Yonder were the hills where they could find thyme in abundance; the fields around supplied clover; and the meadows below were full of flowers. So that hot summer day, under the weeping ash, she was deep in the study of the 'Ligurian queen,' the 'super' system, the mysteries of 'driving,' and making sketches of patent hives. Looking up from her sketch she saw that her husband had fallen asleep, and stayed to gaze at him thoughtfully.
He looked worn, and older than he really was; as if rest or change would do him good; as if he required luxuries and petting. She sighed, and wondered whether the bees would enable her to buy him such things, for though the house was well furnished and apparently surrounded with wealth, they were extremely poor. Yet she did not care for money for their own household use so much as to give him the weight in parish affairs he so sadly needed. She felt that he was pushed aside, treated as a cipher, and that he had little of the influence that properly belonged to him. Her two daughters, their only children, were comfortably, though not grandly, married and settled; there was no family anxiety. But the work, the parish, the people, all seemed to have slipped out of her husband's hands. She could not but acknowledge that he was too quiet and yielding, that he lacked the brazen voice, the personal force that imposes upon men. But surely his good intentions, his way of life, his gentle kindness should carry sway. Instead of which the parish seemed to have quite left the Church, and the parson was outside the real modern life of the village. No matter what he did, even if popular, it soon seemed to pass out of his hands.
There was the school, for instance. He could indeed go across and visit it, but he had no control, no more than the veriest stranger that strolled along the road. He had always been anxious for a good school, and had done the best he could with means so limited before the new Acts came into operation. When they were passed he was the first to endeavour to carry them out and to save the village the cost and the possible quarrelling of a school board. He went through all the preliminary work, and reconciled, as far as possible, the jarring interests that came into play. The two largest landlords of the place were unfortunately not on good terms. Whatever the one did the other was jealous of, so that when one promised the necessary land for the school, and it was accepted, the other withdrew his patronage, and declined to subscribe. With great efforts the vicar, nevertheless, got the school erected, and to all appearance the difficulty was surmounted.
But when the Government inspection took place it was found that, though not nearly filled with scholars, there was not sufficient cubic space to include the children of a distant outlying hamlet, which the vicar had hoped to manage by a dame school. These poor children, ill fed and young, could hardly stand walking to and from the village school--a matter of some five miles daily, and which in winter and wet weather was, in itself, a day's work for their weary little limbs. As the vicar could not raise money enough to pay a certificated teacher at the proposed branch or dame school, the scheme had to be abandoned. Then, according to red tape, it was necessary to enlarge the village school to accommodate these few children, and this notwithstanding that the building was never full. The enlargement necessitated a great additional expenditure The ratepayers did, indeed, after much bickering and much persuasion, in the end pay off the deficiency; but in the meantime, the village had been brought to the verge of a school board.
Religious differences came to the front--there was, in fact, a trial of force between the denominations. Till then for many years these differences had slumbered and been almost forgotten; they were now brought into collision, and the social quiet of the place was upset. A council of the chief farmers and some others was ultimately formed, and, as a matter of fact, really did represent the inhabitants fairly well. But while it represented the parish, it left the vicar quite outside. He had a voice, but nothing more. He was not the centre--the controlling spirit.
He bore it meekly enough, so far as he was personally concerned; but he grieved about it in connection with his deep religious feelings and his Church. The Church was not in the front of all, as it should be. It was hard after all his labour; the rebuffs, the bitter remarks, the sneers of those who had divergent views, and, perhaps worse than all, the cold indifference and apathy of those who wished things to remain in the old state, ignoring the fact that the law would not suffer it. There were many other things besides the school, but they all went the same way. The modern institution was introduced, championed by the Church, worked for by the Church, but when at last it was successful, somehow or other it seemed to have severed itself from the Church altogether. The vicar walked about the village, and felt that, though nominally in it, he was really out of it.
His wife saw it too, still more clearly than he did. She saw that he had none of the gift of getting money out of people. Some men seem only to have to come in contact with others to at once receive the fruits of their dormant benevolent feelings. The rich man writes his cheque for 100_l_., the middle-class well-to-do sends his bank notes for 20_l_., the comfortable middle-class man his sovereigns. A testimonial is got up, an address engrossed on vellum, speeches are made, and a purse handed over containing a draft for so many hundreds, 'in recognition, not in reward, of your long continued and successful ministrations.' The art of causing the purse-strings to open is an art that is not so well understood, perhaps, among the orthodox as by the unorthodox. The Rev. F---- either could not, or would not, or did not know how to ask, and he did not receive.
Just at present his finances were especially low. The tenants who farmed the glebe land threatened to quit unless their rents were materially reduced, and unless a considerable sum was expended upon improvements. To some very rich men the reduction of rents has made a sensible difference; to the Rev. F---- it meant serious privations. But he had no choice; he had to be satisfied with that or nothing. Then the vicarage house, though substantial and pleasant to look at, was not in a good state within. The rain came through in more places than one, and the ancient woodwork of the roof was rotten. He had already done considerable repairing, and knew that he must soon do more. The nominal income of the living was but moderate; but when the reductions were all made, nothing but a cheese-paring seemed left. From this his subscriptions to certain ecclesiastical institutions had to be deducted.
Lastly, he had received a hint that a curate ought to be kept now that his increasing age rendered him less active than before. There was less hope now than ever of anything being done for him in the parish. The landowners complained of rent reductions, of farms idle on their hands, and of increasing expenses. The farmers grumbled about the inclement seasons, their continual losses, and the falling markets. It was not a time when the churlish are almost generous, having such overflowing pockets. There was no testimonial, no address on vellum, no purse with banker's draft for the enfeebled servant of the Church slumbering in the cane chair in the verandah.
Yet the house was exquisitely kept, marvellously kept considering the class of servants they were obliged to put up with. The garden was bright and beautiful with flowers, the lawn smooth; there was an air of refinement everywhere. So the clergyman slept, and the wife turned again to her sketch of the patent hive, hoping that the golden honey might at last bring some metallic gold. The waggon rumbled down the road, and Hodge, lying at full length on the top of the load, could just see over the lowest part of the shrubbery, and thought to himself what a jolly life that parson led, sleeping the hot hours away in the shade.
[The end]
Richard Jefferies's essay: The Parson's Wife