THE STORY OF A NORFOLK FARM.*

TRUTH and sincerity seldom shine more clearly through the words of a book than in Mr. Rider Haggard's Farmer's Year. It sets out the life of the country, not of those who merely live in it, but of the people who live by it, or who, at least, try their best to do so. In other words, Mr. Rider Haggard has been for some time seriously engaged in farming ; and in this book, which he published month by month, he has described with simplicity, earnestness, and sympathy the interests, pleasures, and pains which might accrue to any one of like habits of mind who chose to follow his example and engage in this absorbing pursuit. It is not a treatise on agriculture, but a picture of how a gentleman lives in an exceptionally pleasant county like Norfolk, if he has the financial and real stake in the country which the daily gains and losses of his farms afford. Mr. Rider Haggard's experiences are thus spread over a far wider range, and with foundations set deeper, than those of the many writers of first-rate description of the merely con- templative and sporting side of the country life. He is far nearer to the people ; far nearer to the life of the fields, which as tilled by man cover nine-tenths of our country ; far nearer to the immense sub-population of domestic animals; and not less in touch with Nature. His main theme, his farm and its produce, its soil, and its animals, is dominated from day to day by natural forces ; storms and sunshine, rain, droughts, and mists. We remember no book in which the atmosphere, in the literal sense, is so present. It takes its colour from our misty, vapour-laden skies. But the bitter winds do not blow over many pages, and the sun is always waiting to break through and brighten the fields where the writer's hopes are sown. His work is the cultivation of two groups of farms in a not very promising district in Norfolk, farms which he owned and which had been allowed to "go back" and to get into such a bad state that they had ceased to be a means for pro- ducing crops and animals of more value than the labour and rent and coat of working them. The " points " for which he played were this margin of profit, and if the reader only wants to know whether he won or lost, he must turn to pp. 38-41, and to p. 441, and see what happened. The "loss" for eight years is £1,733 19s. 11d.; but much of this is really value added to hia farms, which are worth far more now than when he took them over. Also, on the last two years he has a profit of 212'2 on the two farms. But though the last day of the year ends with a balance-sheet, the reader will also wish to know what the balance in favour of such an existence is when calculated on the satisfactions or disappointments of the other three hundred and sixty-four days in the cycle, and how the daily life strikes one who, like Mr. Rider Haggard, has seen cities and men, faced Nature and savages in South Africa, and won fame as a writer. His farming is done in rather a large way, con- sidering the amount of capital needed to start in this business. The area of what he occupies is a guarantee that the writer has made no attempt to shirk the risks by limit- ing his liabilities. The farms lie in two thoroughly representa- tive Norfolk parishes, as to which we incidentally become both familiar and interested as we read their daily story. At Ditchingham be has two hundred and sixty acres, one hundred and sixteen of which are his own land. At Bedingham, a more intensely rural village, lie works the Moat Farm, his own *A Farmer's Year : being his Commonplace Book for 7898. By H. Ridge Haggard. With 36 Illustrations. London: Longman* and Co. Lie. ed. natol

property. He owns other land adjacent at Ditchingham ; consequently, he combines the parts of landlord, tenant- farmer, and of owner farming his own property.

Thus he sees rustic problems from several points of view. Speaking generally, he is terribly impressed by the "ruin of agriculture." This is partly due to the ruin of people whom he has known as farmers, and now sees in the workhouse, and partly to his own practical experience of the costliness of production and the crushing "cutting of prices" by foreign competition.

Yet there are districts even in Suffolk and Norfolk where farmers can make a living and pay rent, though not a high rent. In others less favoured by Nature it must be admitted that the battle is a losing one, even if, as Mr. Rider Haggard has discovered, "you lose money more slowly by farming than in any other way." His conclusion is that notwith- standing the care, knowledge, and intelligence which are put into the working of the land, under present conditions it can scarcely be made to pay.

We will not follow his views on Free-trade and Protection, because it is only in parts of England like the far Eastern counties, remote from large towns of any kind, that the farmer can even plausibly argue that he derives almost no indirect benefits from Free-trade. Elsewhere the growth of towns fostered by Free-trade affords a market and gives a living profit. Witness, for instance, the prosperity of the farmers of Cheshire and Lancashire. But this is cold com- fort for Norfolk.

If the land was not all that could be wished, he enjoyed, in company with other employers of labour in his county, two advantages which make life pleasanter than when farming has to be done elsewhere. The men are highly intelligent, skilful, and industrious, and do their part to make the work a success. Their master does them full justice, and his only complaint is that as the older and skilled men disappear there are few to take their places. Another pleasant feature of farming in Norfolk is that the district has long been f mons for fine breeds of stock ; its horses, its red-polled cattle, its black-faced sheep, its turkeys, and all the dwellers in yard. stable, and cow. house are among the best in England, and specially suited to the soil. They are animals in whi 1 the owner can take pride, and for all of which the county knows the standard of excellence. Their owner, being a Norfolk man, clearly feels an added pleasure in the "territorial" unity represented by his land, his servants, and the cattle within his gates. The men are willing workers, helpful, suggestive, and inheritors of long traditions of good workmanship. Here is a tribute to their skill, and to the courage with wuich they

face their work. The business in hand was that of draining an almost flat clayey field, on which water lies and rots the

seed. In Norfolk this is done by cutting drains and filling them in with bushes, thorns cut from the hedges. It sounds easy, but is really very difficult

"First the lines of the drains are drawn with the plough. This sounds simple enough, but to the uninstructed the difficul- ties, especially on a perfectly flat piece of land, sH0131 enormous. In fact, however, there is a slight use in the centre of the field, forming its watershed, so that the drains must run and discharue

in two directions Now this and many other facts have to be mastered and borne in mind by the man who draws the drains; above all he has to know the exact slope of the various falls, and the best spots for the outlets of the water into the ditches. Further, he must make no mistake, or much money and labour are wasted; and the curious part is that he never does make any mistake, at least in my experience I have never known him do so. By ' him ' I mean the ordinary ploughman who is set to draw the drains, not an expert employed for that purpose."

Later we see the men cutting the drains :—

" To contemplate two men beginning to drain a great expanse of six or eight acres of stiff clay on some dull and cheerless day in January is to understand the splendid patience of developed man The task looks so vast in the miserable grey light; it seems almost impossible that two men should find the strength to dig out all those long lines of trenches, or have the spirit to attempt it."

Yet they do this for months, being paid so much per rod, with- out a day's shirking, and are not visibly moved in any way when it is finished. This is no fancy picture of the " swinked hedger," but shows what the men can do in a "winter campaign." Looking after cattle is a business which they enjoy and which to most people sounds rather attrac- tive. But field work in winter is hard and dreary, and they face it with astonishing moral courage. Mr. Little's pictures of this scene, and of the ploughs at work on the closing day of the year, when the sleet is cutting across the land in sheets, are in harmony with the spirit of their toil.

In spite of the inevitable tragedies of the farm among the

beasts and birds, nearly all that Mr. Rider Haggard has to say of his life, apart from its financial side, is wholly good.

The occupations and interests are sound and manly, and the contemplative side id stimulated by constant outdoor living, and far more varied than falls to the lot of the ordinary resident in the country. Take as an instance of the first the story of how he made a meadow on stiff clay land, where local opinion said no grass would thrive.

He sowed with his grasses the seeds of deep rooting herbs, such as chicory, burnet, lucerne, and yarrow, so as to pierce the hard pan of clay subsoil with their roots and let the air down into it. This clever use of natural forces, which he had read of elsewhere, succeeded, and he made his meadows, and has them as a permanent possession. Each day brings its active work, its decisions and forecasts, yet each leaves time for the unmixed pleasure which the eye, in the moments of quiet, gives to the mind when face to face with life in the fields. It is no little pleasure to try to see these sights eye to eye with the writer, aided by the faithful and suggestive though unduly dark illustrations of Mr. G. Leon Little. The quiet beauty of the old farms and churches, of the scenes in rickyards and orchards, and in the life of cattle and sheep, and the writer's intense pleasure in the two really fine picturesque natural features near him, the river Waveney and the hanging wood above it, with the view over the flats below, communicate themselves insensibly to the reader. There is much able comment on the social and business life of the county also, reflective and reasonable enough, and never violent like Cobbett's. Sport, as becomes a Norfolk writer, is not omitted, and though the country round Ditchingliam does not embrace any of the famous heaths, broads, or meres of the county, the naturalist will find pleasure in Mr. Haggard's pages. Mr. Haggard's conclusion as to the prospects of farming as he pursues it are thus summed up :—

.‘ With plenty of capital, inoxhanstible patience, a real love of the thing, and the exe, cise of about as much general intelligence as would be na.essary to move an army corps up the hill, a moderate rent, an interest on the money invested, and possibly a small living profit, if the labour and other conditions are fairly favourable, and in the absence of any sp-cial ill-luck or cahmity, may still be wrung out of the land in our Eastern Counties."