Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 3/July

by Harriet Martineau

THE MONTHS.

Here is July! In how many different tones is that exclamation made! On the whole, I believe July is not popular in England. The promise of spring is gone, and the peculiar pleasures of autumn are far off; and the first rich summer treats are in June. July is too hot, we are told. July is rainy—at least, after St. Swithin’s day. July is too green, with its massive dark foliage—its uniform oaks, and its black sycamores. So say my neighbours. I, however, am of my boys’ way of thinking. July is their holiday season, and therefore a glorious and delicious month. I feel with them, not only because we all make holiday with them, but because there is a singular splendour in the full fruition of the summer, and in the depth of summer influences witnessed and felt in July. Its sultriness, its rains, its glare of sunshine and gravity of shade may sober down the exhilaration of the early year; but they create a deeper pleasure than that of exhilaration. Perhaps July is not exactly the month that I should choose for a long journey of pleasure; but it is the month of all the year to make holiday in, in a rural home, with schoolboys and their sisters. There are even more flowers and fruits than in June; the days are long; and all is ripeness in the animal and vegetable kingdoms.

The time and order of our holidays are determined by the date of the hay-making, and other Midsummer processes. The interval between them and preparations for harvest is the best time for farmers and country-gentlemen to look about them, and penetrate into neighbouring districts, to note the condition of agriculture and the prospects of the crops. This good old custom is kept up in my family, not only for the advantage of anybody’s estate, but because it yields knowledge, health and pleasure at once to the young people, who go with me, two or three at a time, on each of the three or four excursions which precede our usual visit to the sea. Some of these trips occupy only a day,—though a long one. Others require two days, or three, according to weather. The ponies are in training for some time before. There is great thankfulness if the season serves for getting in the hay before June is gone; and, if we have not begun to mow by old Midsummer (July 6th), we have our fears of being caught by the rains of St. Swithin.

This year, the wet close of May, followed by a watery June, has so favoured the grass as to make us nearly secure of a timely haymaking; and our July pleasures are laid out with a confidence which we must hope will not be disappointed.

Little Master Harry, after all, decides what our first trip of this month shall be. He bursts in upon mamma with news that he is going to ride in a cart,—going a long way off, to see beautiful flowers and gooseberries,—going to see a great many people in a great town. Nanny told him so,—his dear Nanny, the nursemaid, who married away from us in April, but contrives to see her pet Harry several times a week. Nanny appears, and explains that her husband has some flowers and some wonderful gooseberries at the horticultural show at N——, and that she begs to be allowed to take Harry with her in the donkey-cart for the ride and the show. It is settled at once that not only Harry, but everybody shall go. My wife will drive two in the pony-carriage from the Crown, and three will ride.

The three who ride will make a circuit by bridle paths: and the others start early, to avoid the dust of the high road at mid-day, when the county is crowding to the show. The dust is still laid with the dew in the avenue as we pace down it after our early breakfast, and the grass is fresh in the broad lane we first turn into from the high-road.

Some people are here before us, however. There are three or four girls, with a woman in the midst of them, crouched down by the ditch, and half-hidden in the hedge, and so busy that they do not notice us till some jingle of stirrup or rein—as we are passing on the grass—makes them look round all at once.

They are herb-gathering. The herbalists have a notion that deadly night-shade, for instance, and several other materials for medicines, are of better quality in their wild state than when grown for sale. What a quantity of that night-shade there is in this lane! There are bundles of other plants, too, in the woman’s basket. She has been at work since before four o’clock, and is going home now the sun is drying up the last of the dew.

How rich the hedges are! For half a mile together they are starred over with wild roses, and the foxgloves are taller than ever: honeysuckles dangle forth in streamers from the hazel-stems and the thorns, and the bindweed chains up everything in its tangles. On the bank are the meadowsweet, and mallows out of number, and the ladies’ bed-straw, and spreading borage, and long trails of wild strawberry, with its scarlet fruit peeping out here and there; and running vetches, and scabious standing up stiff; and under them, for the searching eye of herb-gatherers, there is a wondrous mosaic of tiny blossoms,—scarlet, yellow, blue, white, and purple. The ditch is nearly dry; but, in the moister places, there is forget-me-not, and yellow loose-strife, and rushes enough to supply dragon-flies to glance about the lane.

Bell turns on her saddle to look once more at the woman and her brood, and thinks it must be pleasant to be a herb-gatherer: at least, on a sweet fragrant morning in July. I remark that there

are other occupations for children which look highly agreeable on a summer morning. We must remember the evil of uncertain crops to herb-gatherers, and of changeable weather which makes their calling a very precarious one. It is fatiguing too: Whether it be from superstition or experience, some of the gathering is done in the night, and some in the hot noon, as well as the dewy morning; and many plants lie wide apart—low down in swamps and high up in rocky places, and in the depths of woods, or sprinkled scantily over wild moors.

But Charles wants to know what other children’s occupations have such an agreeable appearance in summer. He is advised to look about him this very morning, and see whether he can observe any. In the midst of his guesses, he is about to dismount to open a gate when he sees there is a girl running to save him that trouble. There is also a boy, but we do not see him till we are just upon him. He lies on his face in the thick grass. As we look back, we see him motion his little sister to him, twist the halfpenny out of her hand and pocket it, and then dismiss her with a kick to her post. She clearly wishes to sit down in the shade; but he thrusts her to the sunny side, whence a longer stretch of the lane is visible. Charles volunteers the observation that he should not like to be either that girl or that boy; but the occupation might be a pleasant one enough. All boys in lanes are not tyrants, he supposes, nor all girls slaves.

Next, he points with his whip to a field on the left, observing that the field is ugly enough, but not the work, he should fancy. It is a brick-field; and, as far as the clay-heaps, and the holes, and the puddles go, nothing can be uglier; but the sheds have a cool appearance; just a picturesque thatch of furze and heather, laid on four poles; and a wattled aide, moveable as the sun travels round. The boys and girls under those sheds have a cool material in clay and water; it must be pretty work moulding the bricks, and turning out the smooth slabs, and ranging them for drying in the form of a perforated wall. Besides, the wages are good and certain, till the winter frost shuts up the season. Still, as Bell observes, it is dirty work, and there is no beauty in wet clay.

“What do you say to this?” I ask, as we see a long, low roof in a turning of the lane, some way before us. We hear a wheel first, and then we look into a very long shed, entirely open throughout its length, and at present chequered with moving shadows from a row of elder bushes on the further side. It is a rope walk; and half-a-dozen men and women are walking backwards, with each a great coil of tow about the waist, while at either end is a wheel, one turned by a boy and the other by a girl. The girl looks hot, the boy looks dull; and when we consider that they will be at their wheels till evening, except at meals, we think it no bad thing for children that the twisting of ropes will soon cease to be done by human hands.

Some real out-door work, something to do in field, or wood, or garden, is what Bell inquires for, to compare with herb-gathering.

Before we have ridden many yards further, we find what we want. What is that shrill and monotonous “halloo!” far away to the right, but nearer and nearer, and alternating with a clapping sound? Charley rises in his stirrups and sees the bird-boy in the next field but one. The bird-boy was out of the question from the beginning, we admit, because of the dreary solitude of his life. Then the shepherd-boy must be excluded also,—far up in the hills. No; the shepherd-boy has his dog to converse with. He is not to be pitied at this time of year. There are children in rows in yonder field to the left,—what are they doing? They are giving the last weeding to the pea-crop; and, in the next field, older lads and lasses are thinning the turnips, work which requires more discretion than weeding. It is to be hoped they get used to the stooping; but in glaring sunshine it must be very trying; and in wet weather, it must be as dirty as the brick-field. Turning a wheel in shade and shelter might be preferable, we all agree. Even as we pace leisurely along, we find the heat rather an evil, and watch for the entrance of the wood into which we mean to turn.

We certainly do not agree in the complaint of the monotony of the foliage in July. There is scarcely a tree which has not interior beauties seen some way off by observing eyes. Not only are there many shades of the same tint when one looks up from below; but there are varying growths of the leaves of the present season which cast lights and shadows through and through the whole structure. Leaves and blossoms have gone on unfolding up to last week, though the great dome was covered in nearly two months since. In the same way I dispute the monotony of the open area of the land. We stop at the entrance of the wood to look over to the far horizon, and note the sameness or variety of the green. ” “Can green be more diversified?” we exclaim. Behind us there is a depth of shade that is almost black. Overhead, as we stand under the beeches, a green light is shed upon us, like that which we imagine at the bottom of the sea. Opposite is the deep green of the turnip-fields, and beyond them the more dusky hue of the unripe corn as it waves in the breeze. Then there is an expanse of lately-mown meadows of the brightest emerald tint, and on the hillside above is a fir-grove, made the more black by the breadths of yellow rye interspersed here and there. This is enough. We shall set up our testimony henceforth whenever July is reproached with the monotony of its colouring.

There are sounds of voices and implements in the depth of this wood; and here are more children at work. My boys had supposed all the cutting and barking in the woods would be over before their holidays; but they forgot the squire’s great birches, which annually afford work to the fellers and barkers till the 15th of July,—the day on which the last load must be carried, and the last chips cleared away.

As I am always ready to own, I never can get past that particular piece of rural business without a stop; and, as usual, we dismount to watch the proceedings. Boys come running to hold our horses or fasten them up; and we sit down in the shade. Bell, however, cannot make out what those children are about, sprawling on their stomachs at the roots of the trees in a glade which runs backward, and poking and stabbing the ground with old knives. They are digging for truffles; and Bell wants no better entertainment than to sit and watch them, and talk to them till summoned by me. Here, at last, is something as pleasant in its way as herb-gathering, only a yet more temporary resource. For the time, however, what can be pleasanter than spending the day in a wood, digging for truffles? At the end of a hot day, it must be pleasant to go forth into the next grass-field where mushrooms may be looked for. To be learned in fungi, which are more eaten, and in larger variety, every year, and to be trusted to bring only what is wholesome; to spend days in pleasant places, and find eager customers in the evenings, must be pleasant labour. So thinks Bell, as she sits at the foot of a beech, where the white butterflies are chasing one another up into the roof of the green tent: but at once the children scramble up, the horses stamp and struggle as if they would break their bridles, and the woodmen throw their axes and saws far from them in the grass. There has been a vivid flash of lightning, and a crash of thunder immediately follows, which makes the heart stop for the moment. It is wonderfully sudden: but we had not looked abroad for many minutes; and now that we do, we see the further region of the open country still lying in yellow sunshine, while a leaden gloom is hurrying thitherward from behind us. More lightning—forked, this time—and crash upon crash of thunder: and above it we hear the roar of the wind in the wood, and then the splash of the rain upon the roof-like foliage. All parties rush into one group, and the group rushes in the direction of the woodmen’s hut. The hut, which is only a structure of planks with a thatch of faggots, will not hold half of us. Bell is thrust in first, and her father and brother next, just as the first stream pours down from every tree. The children do not want shelter, and show signs of crying if forced to take it. To ride ponies is beyond their expectation; but to sit the ponies under the tree, in order to keep the saddles dry, seems now worth a dashing effort: and there they are, two on each steed, winking as the rain dashes in their faces, and the lightning dazzles their eyes, and spreading themselves and their poor clothing over the ponies’ backs so as to catch the utmost amount of wet. As the woodmen say, they would be wet at all events, and they are used to it; and they will fancy they get a ride by it. It is difficult to make the woodmen come in far enough; but we have insisted on their coats being brought in, and all who are in their shirt-sleeves coming in too.

Charles says he remarked the stillness of the wood, except for the noises we made, before the storm: but the men remind us that it is the still season, when no bird sings by day, so that the insects seem to have the covert to themselves, except when a leveret rustles in the fern, or the wood-pecker’s tap is heard from the far side of some great trunk. Except the constant yellowhammer, or the strong blackbird who says what is in him under all circumstances, or the thrush, closing the day with more or less of song, there is nothing to be heard of the birds in July. In the meadows there is the lark sometimes, and in the marshes there is plenty of noise among the water-fowl; but the woods are still at noon as human dwellings at midnight.

The storm travels fast over the open country—now wrapping a village or a farmstead in a mist of rain, and then leaving it behind; so that we are soon inquiring whether the splash around us is mere drip from the trees or the skirts of the shower. Presently we are off on dry saddles, leaving the children rich in coppers and in pride at having had a ride under the tree. We shall be at N—— in twenty minutes; and our steeds will be well looked to there. Fast as our pace is, we watch the storm; and the last we see of it is the bank of black cloud obscuring the horizon line, and making the church spire at L—— stand out white instead of dark against the sky. A burst of red light from the heart of the blackness shows that the electric element is not yet expended. While watching it from the high road we come in view of a group of people, backed by a barouche and a cart. It is not a carriage accident. A large elm has been shivered to the root by the lightning, and its fragments lie round like the spokes of a wheel, showing that it was struck perpendicularly at the summit. As we return in the evening, my wife remarks on the extent to which the corn has been laid since she passed in the morning; but there is time for it to rise again; and beyond this we know of no harm done till we learn from the squire that three sheep of his, and two horses of a neighbour, have been laid low on the hills by one tremendous flash.

The Show meantime is as gay and glorious as if no shadow of gloom had passed over the great tent (or line of tents) in which it is spread out. This is the place to learn what is the fruition of July. The roses seem to be the spoil of the whole county; yet we scarcely passed a house which was not covered with them from the door-step to the eaves. What banks of blossom against either wall of the tent! What tablets of rich colour in the middle! In the other range, what prodigious vegetables coming out of small cottage gardens! and what weighty and noble fruits grown by humble hands! In this department we meet Harry, proud of carrying the largest gooseberry but two on the ground. It has not got the prize; but Nanny is smiling too. A cabbage of her husband’s and a favourite pink have been successful, and Nanny goes home a proud wife.

We take our farewell of roses and carnations for this year, as we did of the bulbous flowers a fortnight since. Our porch and everybody’s garden will have roses, more or less, through the month; but this is the last show of them; and the summer is thus sighing as it passes away over our heads.

We see this lapse of summer as we ride home by the road, which is no longer dusty. The oats, which have escaped the weight of the storm, or which have already been lifted again by the hot sun, flicker in the evening light almost like spangles. They are fully in ear. The scarlet poppy and blue cornflower dot the wheat and barley fields with colour. The thistles are in their beauty; and very beautiful they are, in my opinion. As we pass the village pound at Highcross we hear a bovine voice of complaint, and see that three cows are restlessly moving about, and getting into one another’s way. As usual at this season, they have been irritated by the heat and the flies, and have discovered and made use of the weak points in fences to get into shady gardens, and eat juicy vegetables, and drink from private ponds. We spread the news as we go, that the poor creatures may get home, and their scolding over before night. Such incidents should make old-fashioned people attend more to the arguments for stall-feeding than they do. Even the cows that we see standing knee-deep in the stream by the roadside are sorely teased by the flies. Every movement shows it: and, however the sketching tourist may miss their presence under the slanting trees, and amidst the mirror of the water, it is better for themselves that they should be under a roof in an airy stable where flies are not tolerated. As my wife pours out the rich cream over the strawberries at tea, after our day’s exertions, she tells us that there is a manifest superiority in the milk of cows which lead a cool tranquil life in their airy stalls over that of cows which break fences and run restlessly about, lashing at the flies, only to find themselves in the pound at last.

In two days I must begin my rounds—weather permitting. The two lads are to be my companions on the first occasion, and I hope we may have as prosperous a trip as their sisters and I had last year. The object is to see how the upland farmers get on, and how they are managing the new machines and unheard-of manures introduced among them by the Lords Paramount of their district. It is a charming circuit of forty miles, over the moors and among the hills. Last year there was the stamp of drought over the whole region. We rode in the night more than in the day—the heat was so extreme. It was strange, in the morning twilight, to come upon a group of women in a hollow, or beside a dry cistern in the hedge, some knitting, some chatting, some dozing with sleeping babies in their arms, and every one with a pitcher beside her. Night after night these women sat there to watch the springs. Wherever there was hope of a dribble of water, however small, some anxious housewife crept to the spot when neighbours might be supposed asleep; and there was always somebody there, or sure to follow presently. It was like “prospecting “ in the diggings in gold countries, except that the water was more precious than any gold.

This year the grass will be green in the intervals of the gorse and heather, and there will not be the danger of moorland fires which haunts the inhabitants in very dry seasons. There is no keeping lucifer matches out of the hands of children; there is no teaching packmen to be careful about the ashes of their pipes, or gipsies about disposing of their wood and peat ashes; and the consequence is that the sky is now and then red at midnight, and the breeze hot with fires of a mile broad, and hundreds of acres of young plantations are destroyed. Sportsmen mourn over the game, and improvers over their young woods. The scene cannot compare with the forest and prairie fires of America, which drive all sorts of wild and tame beasts into the ponds together—wolves and lambs, bears and deer, Red Indians and white Christians and negro fugitives—all crouching under water, and putting out their noses into the hot and smoky air when they must breathe. We have no such spectacle as this to watch; but our moorland fires in a droughty July are sublime and terrible in their way, and sadly disastrous.

We shall find something different this year. The peat-cutters will see the brown water ooze into the trenches as they form them: the children will swim their rush-boats in the blue pools among the heather, while their elders are digging and piling the peat. The older children will go bilberry gathering to some purpose in a season like this. Even cranberries are not out of the question. Here and there, as we come upon some little rill glistening in the turf, or muttering among little sandy shoals and pebbles, we shall find women and children, each with a tin pot, picking the red berries from among the dark leaves. I don’t know which is the prettier sight, a basketful of bleaberries with the bloom upon them, or a bowl of cranberries in the sunlight on the grass. There are flowers to all this fruit, too. Clumps and rows and large beds of wild thyme, where the bees are humming all day long; and some of the earlier heaths; and blue-bells quivering with every breath, or sheltering under the gorse; these abound over our whole track. Then, when we stop by the pools where the bulrush waves and nods, and where the cotton-rush hangs out its little banners, as if a fairy host were marching beneath, we look for the curlew’s nest, and, if it be early or late enough, we are sure to hear the plover all along our way. All these things are different in a season of drought. And so it is when we reach the tilled lands, where the quail should be heard in the corn-fields, and the young partridges should be beginning to fly.

It will not take us many miles round to see how the salmon-fishing goes on in the estuary, where the spearing in the pools, as the tide goes out, is a fine night-spectacle. I am always glad of an excuse for a night’s watching, to see the glitter of the torches in the long lines and broad patches of water left by the tide, and the long shadows of the men on the wet sand, and the black circle of figures round the pool, with a yellow face now and then visible from a flash of the torch within, and the basket of silvery, shining fish when there has been good success.

My children tell me I am an animal of nocturnal habits—at least, in the middle of summer. Well! why not? The savans have astonished us with the news that seven-ninths of the known animal creation are now found to be nocturnal in their habits: and why should not I go with the great majority? The laugh is on my side against those who conceitedly suppose the universe to have been made and arranged for them, so that light is better than darkness, and the day than the night, because it suits them better! However, for three parts in four of the year, I am willing to follow the fashion of my kind in shutting my eyes upon the night; but in the hot season, why not enjoy the sweetest hours of the twenty-four?

Then we look for lights, as in the day we look for flowers. Not only in the sky—though the meteors are splendid in the thundery season—but in the woods, in the gardens, and on the sea. The glow-worm is gone: but there is a more diffused and mysterious light about the roots of trees than the glow-worm gives; and where felled trees have lain long, we may see it playing on and under the prostrate trunk. It is the phosphorescent light which hangs about certain fungi, and especially those which infest decaying wood. There have been rare nights at this season when I have caught the flash of light which certain flowers give out, and there is no doubt to my mind about the soft veil of floating radiance which wraps round some of the boldest blossoms in our greenhouses and parterres in sultry nights. Where there is a fine spread of nasturtiums, or a large clump of the hairy red poppy, or a group of orange lilies, the pretty sight may be seen, quite independently of the amusement of holding a light to fraxinellas, and other flowers which abound in volatile oils.

Our grand night-adventure, however, will be at the close of the month. The boys’ holidays are to end at the sea, this summer, as in many former ones, and it is an old promise that we should spend a night at sea with the herring-boats. Besides stars and meteors, we may then see lights of many hues. The lighthouse gleam, waxing and waning the whole night through, with the long train it casts over the heaving sea, has an inexhaustible charm for me. To watch it from an inland hill is very bewitching, or from a distant point on the sands, especially if they are wet; but this is nothing to the pleasure at sea, where that path lies straight to one’s feet, wherever one may go, growing bright and dim, and bright again, as by a regular pulsation, answering to one within one’s-self. Then, in the wake of the boat, there may perhaps be the phosphorescent light so familiar to voyagers, now glancing in large sparkles, and now breaking out along the ridge of a billow. Moonlight there will not be: for the choice is of a dark night for the fishery. A dark night, with breeze enough to ripple the water, is the best.

We have often seen the watcher on the cliffs, looking out with experienced eyes for the peculiar sheen and movement of the water which betoken the presence of the herrings. It will be rather too early for the great shoals on which the fortunes of the fishermen for the year depend. If it were not, there would be no chance for us; for the men want every inch of room in their boats for themselves in the full season. But we may be in time for the first-fruits of the fishery; and if so, we are to make a night of it, starting at sunset or later, according to where the fish may be. We rather hope to go far out, and get some notion of deep-sea fishing, and of the smell, and the handling of the nets and other gear; and of the look of the fish as they come tumbling in, and glitter in the rays of the lantern; and of the appearance of the setting of stars and rising of dawn from the very surface of the sea, which is quite different from the elevation of a large vessel; and, not least, of the notions, and talk, and manners of the fishermen, and how they sup, and how they manage their craft, so that in future we may know how to think of them, when, from the cliff or the beach, we see their fleet put off for the night-fishing, or returning in the early sunlight.

July must certainly be a favourite month with me, so hard as I find it to turn away from the mere inventory of its pleasures. But there is business to be looked to.

The greenhouses must be repaired and painted while we can keep the plants out of doors. We must put an end to the delay about opening the drinking-fountain in the village, which was promised before the dog-days. The trough below is more wanted for the dogs than even the cup and basin above for working-men and wayfarers. If the policeman keeps an eye on that trough, to see that it is not meddled with, and on any strange hungry dog that may appear, we need have no more horrible alarms about mad dogs, such as we had last year. There would be nearly an end of that terror if there were water-troughs for dogs wherever dogs abound. We must get the people at N—— stirred up to erect drinking-fountains, and open their baths before the hot weather is gone. When down in the low grounds, I must see after the cygnets for the park-mere, and take a lesson in swan-doctoring for the languid season, when it is not easy to replenish the still waters sufficiently. My neighbours entreat me to ascertain the truth about the potato-disease. Now is the time for it to give hints, if it is going to afflict us again; and to inquire into this is the main object of my next circuit among the farms. The field peas will be cut in the forwardest places by the time we return from our last round; and the lads are to see the thatching of the ricks, as we are learning to do it now. More children’s employments! There is driving home the peat-crate, drawn by pony or ass, and cranberry gathering, and helping in fishing and curing, both salmon and herrings, to say nothing of all the other fish which abound in July,—the cod and smelts, the turbots, soles, skate, and plenty more. Then there is the gathering of unripe apples and plums, to sell for puddings and pies; and carrying to market the thinnings of the apricot crops, which make the best tarts in the world; and the supplying all housewives with fruit for preserving,—currants and raspberries, gooseberries and strawberries. Then the stout country lads can get in the peas, cut them close to the ground with sickles, and bind them with the least possible shaking; and the girls meantime must be looking after the ailing hens, which will be moulting for a month to come. There is plenty for everybody to do in July, though the barley will not put on its dazzling whiteness till the end of the month, nor the red wheat yet look as if it was tanned by the sun. We call it an interval of leisure between the hay and the corn harvests; but there is plenty to do and to learn, as my lads and I shall find, from beginning to end of our holiday time. If there is any leisure, it is when St. Swithin’s Day makes good its old promise; but July rains keep no rational people within doors for many hours at a time. Some of us like them as well as sunshine, when seen from a boat-house or the shelter of a hollow tree: and an alternation of the two, which would be our choice, is usually our happy fate. And so marches July, in his gay pathway between ripening harvests!