commenced as farmer in Suffolk, —
" To moil and to toil
With loss and pain, to little gain,
To cram Sir Knave " ; —
from which I fancy that he had a hard landlord, and
but little sturdy resolution. Thence he goes to Ips-
wich, or its neighborhood, with ud better experience.
Afterward we hear of him with a second wife at Dere-
ham Abbey ; but his wife is young and sharp-tempered,
and his landlord a screw : so he does not thrive here,
but goes to Norwich and commences chorister again ;
but presently takes another farm in Fairstead, Essex,
where it would ^em he eked out a support by collect-
ing tithes for the parson. But he says, —
" I spjed, if parson died,
(All hope in vain,) to hope for gain
I might go dance."
Possibly he did go dance : he certainly left the tithe-
business, and after settling in one more home, from
Digitized by VjOOQIC
140 . WET DAYS.
which he ran to escape the plague, we find hun return
ed to London, to die, — where he was buried in th6
Poultry.
What is specially remarkable about Tusser is his air
of entire resignation amid all manner of vicissitudes :
he does not seem to coimt his hardships either wonder-
ful or intolerable or unmerited. He tells us of the
thrashing he had at Eton, (fifty-four licks,) without
greatly impugning the head-master; and his shifUess-
ness in life makes us strongly suspect that he deserved
it all.
There are good points in his poem, showing close
observation, good sense, and excellent judgment His
rules of farm-practice are entirely safe and judicious,
and make one wonder how the man who could give
such capital advice could make so capital a failure. In
the secret lies all the philosophy of the difference be-
tween knowledge and practice. The instance is not
without its modem support : I have the honor of ac-
quaintance with several gentlemen who lay down
charming rules for successful husbandry, every time
they pay the coimtry a visit ; and yet even their poultry*
account is always largely against the constipated hens.
I give one or two specimens of Tusser's mode of
preaclunent ; the first from his March's husbandry : —
** Sow barley in March, in April, and May,
The later in sand, and the sooner in day.
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THOMAS TUSSER, 141
What worser for barley than wetness and cold?
What better to skilM than time to be bold?
Tiet barley be harrowed finely as dost,
Then workmanly trench it, and fence it ye must.
This season well plied, set sowing an end,
And praise and pray God a good harvest to send.
^ Some rolleth their barley straight after a rain,
When first it appeareth, to level it plain;
The barley so used the better doth grow.
And handsome ye make it, at harvest to mow.
"At spring (for the summer) sow garden ye shall,
At harvest (for winter) or sow not at all.
Oft digging, removing, and weeding, ye see.
Makes herb the more wholesome and greater to be.*'
Again in his teaching for February he says, vcrjf
lltrewdly : —
'^ Who slacketh his tillage a carter to be.
For groat got abroad, at home lose shall three ;
And so by his doing, he brings out of heart
Both land for the com and horse for the cart.
" Who abuseth his cattle, and starves them for meat,
By carting or ploughing his gain is n^t great :
Where he that with labor can use them aright,
Hath gain to his comfort, and cattle in plight.*'
Fuller, in his " Worthies," says Tusser " spread his
bread with all sorts of butter, yet none would stick
Uiereon.'* In short, though the poet wrote well on
Digitized by VjOOQIC
i42 WET DAYS.
farm-practice, he certainly was not a good exemplar of
farm-successes. With all his excellent notions about
sowing and reaping, and rising with the lark, I should
look for a little more of stirring mettle and of dogged
resolution in a man to be recommended as a tenant
I cannot help thinking less of him as a farmer than as
a kind-hearted poet ; too soft of the edge to cut very
deeply into hard-pan, and too porous and flimsy of
character for any compacted resolve: yet taking life
tenderly, withal; good to those poorer than himself
making a rattling appeal for Christmas charities ; hos-
pitable, cheerful, and looking always to the end with an
honest clearness of vision : —
" To death we must stoop, be we tigt, be we low,
But how, and how suddenly, few be that know;
What cany we, then, but a sheet to the grave,
(To cover this carcass,) of all that we have? "
Sir Hugh Piatt.
QIR HUGH PLATT, who lived m the latter part of
^ the sixteenth century, is called by Mr. Weston in
his catalogue of English authors, " the most ingenious
husbandman of his age." He is elsewhere described as
a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn, who had two estates in
the country, besides a garden in St Martin's Lane. He
iras an enthusiast in agricultural, as well as horticul
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SIR HUGH PL ATT. 148
tural inquiries, corresponding largely with leading
farmers, and conducting careful experiments within
his own grounds. In speaking of that " rare and peer-
less plant, the grape," he insists upon the wholesome*
ness of the wines he made from his Bednall-Greene
garden: "And if," he says, "any exception shold be
taken against the race and delicacie of them, I am
content to submit them to the censure of the best
mouthes, that professe any true skill in the judgement
of high country wines : although for their better credit
herein, I could bring in the French Ambassador, who
(now ahnost two yeeres since, comming to my house
of purpose to tast these wines) gaue this sentence upon
them: that he neuer drank any better new wine in
France."
I must confess to more doubt of the goodness of the
wine than of the speech of the ambassador; French
ambassadors are always so complaisant !
Again he indulges us in the story of a pretty conceit
whereby that "delicate Knight," Sir Francis Carew,
proposed to astonish the Queen by a sight of a cherry-
tree in full bearing, a month after the fruit had gone
by in England. This secret he performed, by " strain-
ing a Tent or couer of canimss ouer the whole tree, and
wetting the same now and then with a scoope or home,
as the heat of the weather required : and so, by with-
olding the sunne beams from reflecting upon the ber
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144 WET DAYS.
ries, they grew both great, and were very long befor«
they had gotten their perfect cherrie-colour : and when
he was assured of her Majestie's comming, he remoued
the Tent, and a few sunny dales brought them to their
full maturities."
These notices are to be found in his " Flores Para-
disae." Another work, entitled "Dyuers Soyles for
manuring pasture and arable land^" enumerates, in ad-
dition to the usual odorous collection, such extraordi-
narily new matters (in that day) as "salt, street-dirt,
clay. Fullers earth, moorish earth, fern, hair, calcination
of all vegetables, malt dust, soap-boilers ashes, and
marie." But what I think particularly commends him to
notice, and makes him worthy to be enrolled among
the pioneers, is his little tract upon " The Setting of
Come."*
In this he anticipates the system of "dibbling'
grain, which, notwithstanding, is spoken of by writers
within half a century f as a new thing ; and which, it
is needless to say, still prevails extensively in many
parts of England. If the tract alluded to be indeed
the work of Sir Hugh Piatt, it antedates very many of
the suggestions and improvements which are usually
* This is not mentioned either by Felton in his PortraiUy etc, by
Johnson in his History of Gardening , or by London. Donaldson givet
the title, and the headings of the chapters. I also observe that it if
illuded to by a late writer in the London Quirterly.
* See Young, AnnaU of Agriculture^ Vol III. p. 219, el »eq.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
SIR HUGH PLATT, 145
accorded to TuU. The latter, indeed, proposed the
drill, and repeated tillage ; hut certain advantages, be-
fore unconsidered, such as increased tillering of individ-
ual plants, economy of seed, and fecility of culture, are
common to both systems. Sir Hugh, in consecutive
chapters, shows how the discovery came about ; " why
the come shootes into so many eares"; how the
ground is to be dug for the new practice; and what
are the several instruments for making the holes and
covering the grain.
He i^irther relates, with a simplicity which is almost
suspicious, that the art of dibbling grain originated
with a silly wench who had been put by her master to
the setting of carrots and radishes; and having some
seed-wheat in her bag, she dropped some kernels into
the holes prepared for the carrots, and these few ker-
nels shot up with such a wonderful luxuriance as had
never been seen before.
I cannot take a more courteous leave of this worthy
gentleman than by giving his own envoi to the most
considerable of his books : — " Thus, gentle Reader,
having acquainted thee with my long, costly, and labo-
rious collections, not written at Adventure, or by an
imaginary conceit in a SchoUer's private studie, but
wrung out of the earth, by the painfull hand of expeii-
ence : and having also given thee a touch of Nature,
whom no man as yet ever durst send naked into the
10
Digitized by VjOOQIC
146 WET DAYS.
worlde without her veyle : aad Expecting, by thy good
eutertainement of these, some encouragement for higher
and deeper discoveries hereafter, I leave thee to the
God of Nature, from whom all the true lipht of Nature
proceedeth."
Gervase Markham.
GERVASE MARKHAM must have been a rois-
tering gallant about the time that Sir Hugh was
conducting his experiments on " Soyles " ; for, in 1591,
he had the honor to be dangerously wounded in a duel
which he fought in behalf of the Countess of Shrews-
bury ; there are also some painful rumors current (in
old books) in regard to his habits- in early life, which
weaken somewhat our trust in him as a quiet country-
counsellor. I suspect, that, up to mature life, at any
rate, he knew much more about the sparring of a
game-cock than the making of capons. Yet he wrote
books upon the proper care of beasts and fowls, as
well as upon almost every subject connected with hus-
bandry. And that these were good books, or at least
in large demand, we have in evidence the memoran-
dmn of a promise which some griping bookseller ex-
torted from him, under date of July, 1617: —
**!, Gervase Llarkham, of London, Gent, do promise
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GERVA3E MARKUAM. 147
hereafter never to write any more book or books to be
printed of the diseases or cures of any cattle, ^s horse,
oxe, cowe, sheepe, swine and goates, &c. In witness
whereof, I have hereunto sett my hand, the 24*** day of
Julie. " Gervis Markham."
I have already alluded to his edition of the ^ Mai-
son Rustique** of Liebault; and notwithstanding the
religiously meditative air which belongs to some por-
tions of his " Coimtry CJontentments," he had a hand
in the concoction of one or two poems that kindled
greatly the ire of the Puritan clergy.
From a book of his to which he gave the title of
*' The English Husbandman " I venture to copy on the
next page a little plan of an English &rm-house, which
he assures us is given not to please men of dignity,
but for the profit of the plain husbandman.
There is no doubt but he was an adroit book-maker ;
and the value of his labors, in respect to practical
husbandry, was due chiefly to his art of arranging,
compacting, and illustrating the maxims and practices
already received. His observations upon diseases of
cattle and upon horsemanship were doubtless based on
experimental knowledge ; for he was a rare and ardent
sportsman, and possessed all a sportsman's keenness in
the detection of infirmities.
In this connection I qviDte a little passage about the
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148
WET DAYS.
A MODEL ENGLISH FABM-HOUSB, A. D. 1000.*
manner of ^ putting a Cocke into batteV which he has
interpolated upon the grave work of the Councillor
Heresbach.
" When your cocke is equally matched, it is then
your part to give him all the naturall and lawfull advan-
tages, which may availe for his conquest; as first to
• Explanation of references : —
^ A. Signifies the great hall. H. Inner cellar to serve for larder
B. The dining-parlor for stran- I. Buttery,
gers. E. Kitchen.
G. Closet for use of mistress. L. Dury-house.
D. Strangers' lodging. M. Milk-house.
£. Staircase to room over parlor. N. A fieure sawne pale.
F. Staircase to goodman's room. 0. Great gate tc rideintohall-dort
O. The skrene in the hall. P. Place for pump."
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(jfERVASE MARKHAM. 141
disburden him of all things superfluous, as exti*avagant
feathers about his head, the long feathers of his Mane,
even fi:om the head to the Shoulders, and this must be
done as close to the necke as may be, for the least
feather his enemy can catch hould on, is a ladder by
which he will rise to destroy him; also the smaU
feathers about his rumpe and others of like nature.
As thus he takes away things superfluous, so you must
add to those which have anything wanting, as if his
Beake be rough, you must smooth it, but not weaken it ;
if his Spurres be blunt and uneven, you must sharpen
them and make them so piercing that on the smallest
entrance, they may run up to the very beame of the
leg ; and for his wings you must make them like the
wings of a Dragon, every feather like a ponyard, stab-
bing and wounding wheresoever they touch : this done
rub his head over with your own Spittel, and so leave
him to Fortune."
The advice may seem somewhat out of date, and yet
I cannot help being reminded by it of the way in which
our politicians prepare their Presidential candidates.
The last suggestion of Markham (as cited above) is
particularly descriptive.
It would be unfair to the good man's memory to leave
him pitting a cock ; so I will give the reader some of
his hints in regard to the appointments of the English
housewife.
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IfiO WET DAYS,
^ Let her garments," he says, (and it might be said in
New England,) " be comely and strong, made as well to
preserve health, as to adorn the person, altogether with-
out toyish garnishes, or the gloss of light colors, and
as &r from the vanity of new and fantastick fashions,
as near to the comely imitation of modest matrons. Let
her dyet be wholsome and cleanly, prepared at due
hours, and cooked with care and diligence; let it be
rather to satisfie nature, than her affections, and apter
to kill hunger, than revive new appetites. Let it pro-
ceed more from the provision of her own yard, tlian
the furniture of the markets ; and let it be rather es-
teemed for the familiar acquaintance she hath with it,
than for the strangeness and rarity it bringeth fi'om
other countries.
" To conclude, our English Housewife must be of
chaste thoughts, stout courage, patient, untired, watch-
ful, diligent, witty, pleasant, constant in friendship, full
of good neighborhood, wise in discourse, but not fre-
quent therein, sharp and quick of speech, but not bitter
or talkative, secret in her affairs, comfortable in her
counsels, and generally skilfuU in the worthy knowl-
edges which do belong to her vocation."
Again he gives us the details of a " humble feast
of a proportion which any good man may keep in his
femily."
" As thus : — first, a shield of brawn with mustard ;
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GERVASE MARKHAM, 151
secondly, a boyPd capon ; thirdly, a boyl'd piece of
beef ; fourthly, a chine of beef rested ; fifthly, a neat's
tongue rosted ; sixthly, a pig rosted ; seventhly, chewits
baked ; eightly, a goose rosted ; ninthly, a swan rosted ;
tenthly, a turkey rosted; eleventh, a haunch of venison
rosted i twelfth, a pasty of venison ; thirteenth, a kid
with a pudding in the belly ; fourteenth, an olive pye ;
the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the sixteenth, a
custard or dowsets."
This is what Master Glervase calls a frugal dinner, for
the entertainment of a worthy friend ; is it any wonder
that he wrote about " Coimtry Contentments " ?
My chapter is nearly full ; and a burst of sunshine is
flaming over all the land under my eye ; and yet I am
but just entered upon the period of English literary
history which is most rich in rural illustration. The
mere backs of the books relating thereto, as my glance
ranges over them, where they stand in tidy platoon,
start a delightfully confused picture to my mind.
I think it possible that Sir Hugh Piatt may some
day entertain at his Bednall-Greene garden the wor-
shipful Francis Bacon, who is living down at Twicken-
ham, and who is a thriving lawyer, and has written es-
says, which Sir Hugh must know, — in which he dis-
courses shrewdly upon gardens, as well as many kindred
matters; and through his wide correspondence, Sii
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162 WET DAYS.
Hugh must probably have heard of certain new herbs
which have been brought home from Virginia and the
Eoanoke, and very possibly he is making trial of a to-
bacco-plant in his garden, to be submitted some day to
iiis friend, the French ambassador.
I can fancy Gervase Markham *' making a night of
it" with those rollicking bachelors, Beaumont and
Fletcher, at the " Mermaid," or going with them to the
Globe Theatre "to see two Warwickshire brothers, Ed-
mund and Will Shakspeare, who are on the boards
there, — the latter taking the part of Old Knowell, in
Ben Jonson's play of " Every Man in his Humour.''
His friends say that this Will has parts.
Then there is the fiery and dashing Sir Philip Sidney,
who threatened to thrust a dagger into the heart of poor
Molyneux, his father's steward, for opening private
letters (which poor Molyneux never did) ; and Sir
Philip knows all about poetry and the ancients; and
in virtue of his knowledges, he writes a terribly magnil-
oquent and tedious " Arcadia," which, when he comes
to die gallantly in battle, b admired and read every-
where : nowadays it rests mostly on the shelf. But
the memory of his generous and noble spirit is far live-
lier than his book. It was through him, and his friend-
ship, probably, that the poet Spenser was gifted by the
Queen with a fine farm of three thousand acres among
the Bally-Howra hills of Ireland.
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GERVASE MARKHAM, 153
And it was here that Sir Walter Raleigh, that " shep*
herd of the sea," visited the poet, and found him seated
"• amongst the coolly shade
Of the green alders, by the Mullahs shore/'
Did the gallant privateer possibly talk with the far-
mer about the introduction of that new esculent, the
potato?* Did they talk tobacco? Did Colin Clout
have any observations to make upon the rot in sheep,
or upon the probable " clip " of the year ?
Nothing of this; but
*' He pip*d, I sung; and when he songi I pip'd:
By channge of tones each making other meny. *'
The lines would make a fair argument of the poet's
bucolic life. I have a strong faith that his farming was
of the higgledy-piggledy order ; I do not believe that
he could have set a plough into the sod, or have made
a good "cast" of barley. It is certain, that, when
* Introduced probably by Sir Walter Raleigh about 1586. But the
vegetable was a deb'cacy (or at least a rarity) in James I.'s time; and
in 1619 a small number were bought for the Queen's use at one shil-
ling per pound. In 1662 they were recommended by the Royal Society
for more extended cultivation.
Scott Bum, OutUnei of Modem Farming y p. 43, gives (without au-
thority) the year 1750 as the date of their final introduction as a field-
crop. Parkinson, in his Theatrum Boianicum^ first published in 1640,
ntttes among garden-vegetables, " Spanish potatoes, Virginia potatoes,
and Canada potatoes (Jerusalem artichoke)." See also Johnson, J^M^ory
of Gardening^ p. 103. John Mortimer, writuig as late as 1707, ( Country
num^s Kalendar,) says of the potato, " The root is very near the nature
of the Jerusalem artichoke, but not so good or wholesome. These aia
planted either of roots or seeds, and may probably be propagated in
l^reat quantities, and prove good food for swine."
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154 WET DAYS.
(he Tyrone rebels burned him out of Eilcolman Gistl^
he tx)ok no treasure with him but his Elizabeth and
die two babes ; and the only treasures he left were the
ashes of the dear child whose fkce shone on him there
for the last time, —
*' bright with many a curl
That clustered round her head/*
I wish I could love his " Shepherd's Calendar " ; but
I cannot Abounding art of language, exquisite fan-
cies, delicacies innumerable there may be ; but there is
no exhilarating air from the mountains, no crisp breezes,
no songs that make the welkin ring, no river that
champs the bit, no sky-piercing falcon.
And as for the " Faery Queene," if I must confess it,
I can never read far without a sense of sufibcatdon from
the affluence of its beauties. It is a marvellously fair
sea and broad, — with tender winds blowing over it,
and all the ripples are iris-hued ; but you long for some
brave blast that shall scoop great hollows in it, and
shake out the briny beads from its lifted waters, and
drive wild scuds of spray among the screaming cur-
lews.
In short, I can never read far in Spenser without tak-
ing a rest, — as we farmers lean upon our spades, when
the digging is in unctuous fat soil that lifts heavily.
And so I leave the matter, — with the " Faerj
Queene " in my thought, and leaning on my spade.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
FIFTH DAY.
Unfflish Weather.
\TTE are fairly on English ground now ; of course^
^ ^ it is wet weather. The phenomena of the Brit-
ish climate have not changed much since the time when
the rains " let fall their horrible pleasure " upon the
head of the poor, drenched outcast, Lear. Thunder
and lightning, however, which belonged to that partic-
ular war of the elements, are rare in England. The
rain is quiet, fine, insinuating, constant as a lover, — not
wasting its resom-ces in sudden, explosive outbreaks.
During a foot-tramp of some four hundred miles,
which I once had the pleasure of making upon English
soil, and which led me from the mouth of the Thames
to its sources, and thence through Derbyshire, the West
Riding of Yorkshire, and all of the Lake counties, I do
not think that the violence of the rain kept me housed
for more than five days out of forty. Not to say that
the balance showed sunshine and a bonny sky ; on the
Digitized by VjOOQIC
156 WET DAYS.
contrary, a soft, lubricating mist is the normal conditioi
of the British atmosphere ; and a neutral tint of gray
sky, when no wet is falling, is almost sure to call out
from the country-landlord, if commimicative> an explo-
sive and authoritative, " Fine morning, this. Sir ! **
The really fine, sunny days — days you believed in
rashly, upon the sunny evidence of such blithe poets as
Herrick — are so rare, that, after a month of British
travel, you can count them on your fingers. On such a
one, by a piece of good fortune, I saw all the parterres
of Hampton Court, — its great vine, its labyrinthine
walks, its stately alleys, its ruddy range of brick, its
clipped lindens, its rotund and low-necked beauties of
Sir Peter Lely, and the red geraniums flaming on the
window-sills of once royal apartments, where the pen-
sioned dowagers now dream away their lives. On
another such day, Twickenham, and all its delights of
trees, bowers, and villas, were flashing in the sun as
brightly as ever in the best days of Horace Walpole or
of Pope. And on yet another, afl«r a weary tramp, I
toiled up to the inn-door of " The Bear," at Woodstock ;
and aft;er a cut or two into a ripe haimch of Oxford-
shire mutton, with certain " tiny kickshaws," I saw, for
the first time, under the light of a glorious simset, that
exquisite velvety stretch of the park of Woodstock, —
dimpled with water, dotted with forest-clumps, — where
7ompanies uf sleek fallow-deer were grazing by the
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ENGLISH WEATHER, 157
hundred, where pheasants whirred away down the aisles
of wood, where memories of Fair Rosamond and of
Rochester and of Alice Lee lingered, — and all brought
to a ringing close by Southey's ballad of " Blenheim,"
as the shadow of the gaunt Marlborough column
slanted across the path.
TherQ are other notable places, however, which seem
— so dependent are we on first impressions — to be al-
ways bathed in a rain -cloud. It is quite impossible,
for instance, for me to think of London Bridge save as