KALM'S ENGLAND IN 1748.* AN Englishman ignorant of the routine
of farming and its details might learn from the pages of Pehr Kalm, the Swede, a great deal more than from many of his own countrymen. Kalm noted a multitude of small facts simply because they were new to him,—Swedish farming differing in several re- spects from English. The long winters of Sweden, the short summers, alone were good enough reasons for providing a striking contrast in methods. But Kalm was a man of remark- ably keen observation and quick mental aptitude for grasping the value of any agricultural method. It takes him but a few words at times to state the reason of such and such an opera- tion, to discuss the waste and economy of it, and finally to strike a balance. Often he was misinformed, and often he had, from his ignorance of the eccentricity of the English climate, nothing but his own experience of Swedish agriculture to act upon, as a standard of comparison. Again and again is the contrast between a necessarily hurried series of farming opera- tions, as in Swedish agriculture, and the larger, longer, and more finished experience, begotten of an island people, a fertile country, and a temperate climate, brought out in describing operations common to both countries. On the one hand, an economy begotten of poverty and rough-and-ready makeshifts ; on the other hand, an extravagance and waste begotten of a generous soil, and devices for storing and using produce, showing a more exact knowledge of farming. Kahn noted the care with which even tree-roots were collected, and sold as fuel, and the twigs made up into bundles. He says :- " The Swedish wood-vendors ought to consider this." English fires being open, depend so much on the " kindling," that in this country it would be difficult to realise a fire being laid without it, even in a country where heating arrangements are different.
Kalm noticed the idleness of the English peasant in the evenings when the day's work was over ; he did not make waggons, and his wife sat over the fire and prated. He was told that there were men whose business it was to make waggons ; but if he allowed that as a reason, he probably drew a comparison between English and Swedish earls, particularly whenever he came upon a more than usually deplorable specimen of a gate. As for the women, they never have, or ever had, an excuse for not knitting something useful.
• Kaitn's Account of ins Visit to England on his Way to Avarice in 17103. Translated by Joseph Lucas. With 2 Maps and Illustrations. Macmillan and Co. 1892. Doubtless, if we had an eight months' winter, they would be compelled to employ their fingers from sheer weariness of spirit. Kalm must have often sighed over the severity of Swedish winters, as he walked over farms and noticed the various crops still green ; that sheep should winter out even with four inches of snow on the ground, with a rude shelter for lambs and ewes, was a novelty to him, and he emphasises it strongly, also the fact that the turnips served them for bait through the winter. The hardiness of the turnip and the vetches appealed to him, indeed, as an extraordinary gain in solving the problem of winter feed. Kalm, by-the-way, had a, poor idea of English notions of comfort. The rooms with open fire-places were as cold within as without, he says, but for a space near the fire,—a truth most of us can vouch for. We know, too, that 97 per cent. of the heat given out by a coal-grate goes up the chimney. This does not apply to those old-fashioned cavernous fire-places where a few logs or some faggots smouldering across a couple of fire-dogs on the ground, burn slowly and throw out a steady warmth. Kalm mentions the ingle-nook, but hardly talks as if he ever sat in one. He declares that more wood is burnt in England than in Sweden by a farmer. Against this extravagance, however, there are various economies to be noted down,—the collection of road-dirt for manure, also the ditch-cleanings, and the thatching of stacks of hay with straw—most minutely de- scribed—instead of using the hay-lathe, whereby in England we preserve good hay for an indefinite time cutting it, too, so as to preserve its goodness as long as possible. We are not denying the advantages of the large "lathes." The careful Swedish farmer pulls his stack to pieces anyhow, beginning with all the topmost hay, and so loses the greater part of its fragrance as he works downwards. Kahn is never tired of describing how grain-ricks are raised on " rick-frames "to keep them from damp and mice, and he is at great trouble to explain the planting and laying of hedges —an art which we do really know something about—and the care with which the smallest twigs were saved and tied up in bundles. But while all this evoked sincere admiration for English farming from the Swedish agriculturalist, his pre.
conceived notions of the division of labour received a severe shock. After telling us that when English women go out to pay compliments to each other, they " commonly wear a red cloak ":— " All go laced," he says, " and for every-day use wear a sort of manteau made commonly of brownish Camlot. Here it is not unusual to see a farmer's or another small personage's wife clad
on Sundays like a lady of ` quality' and her every-day attire in proportion When they go out they always wear straw hats which they have made themselves from wheat-straw, and are pretty enough. On high days they have on ruffles. One hardly ever sees a woman here trouble herself in the least about outdoor duties, such as tending in the arable and meadows, &c. The duty of the women in this district scarcely consists in anything else but preparing food, which they commonly do very well, though roast beef and pudding forms nearly all an Englishman's eatables."
But he tells ns that they "wash and scour dishes and floors," and are careful about cleanliness, "especially in these things to wash clothes, and to hem one thing and another minutely." The next paragraph, which sums np Kahn's feelings on the point, is so admirable that we must be allowed to quote it whole :— "They never take the trouble to bake, because there is a baker in every parish or village, from whom they can always have new bread. Nearly the same can be said about brewing. Weaving and spinning is also in most houses a more than rare thing, because their many owinufactwrers save them from the necessity of such. For [T. I. p. 324] the rest, it belongs to the men to tend the cattle, milk the cows, and to perform all the work in the arable fields and meadows, and in the ' lodge' and lathe,' &c. I con- fess that I at first rubbed my eyes several times to make them clear, because I could not believe I saw aright, when I first came here, out in the country, and saw the farmers' houses full of young women, while the men, on the contrary, went out both morning and evening to where the cattle were, milk-pail in hand, sat down to milk, and afterwards carried the milk home. I had found, then, that every land has its customs. In short, when one enters a house and has seen the women cooking, washing floors, plates and dishes, darning a stocking or sewing a chemise, wash- ing and starching linen clothes, he has, in fact, seen all their household economy and all that they do the whole of God's long day, year out and year in, when to these are added some visitors. Nearly all the evening occupations which our women in Sweden perform are neglected by them, but, instead, here they sit round the fire without attempting in the very least degree what we call husluills-syslor,' household duties. But they can never be deprived of the credit of being very handsome and very lively in society. In pleasant conversation, agreeable repentze, polite sallies, in a word, in all that the public calls' belefvenhet,'poUteese and savoir vivre, they are never wanting."
Kelm, be it remembered, is writing from Little Gaddesden, Herts, one of the four places at which he investigated English agriculture, the others being Woodford in Essex, Gravesend in Kent, and London. Kalm is speaking of the farmer class, we presume, when he talks of roast-beef and pudding ; but that baking and brewing were so seldom done at home by them in the year 1748 is a. surprise to us. If he referred to the labour- ing class there would be no difficulty in understanding him, for the wife of the English "earl" has ever been a helpless creature, who would rather starve than bake her own bread. Kahn sums up a foreigner's view of the English Sabbath as spent by the working man, in a few words much to the point. However, his remarks on social life are, unfortunately, as rare as they are good, and it is to farming be devotes his scrutiny.
The draining of arable land on every farm he saw is noted, and the arrangement made for each crop is never forgotten. He measures the width of the " riggs " and their height, though he did not apparently realise the true meaning of the furrow on the top of each " rigg." He makes an exhaustive examination of pastures and hay-meadows, and the presence of moss is instantly de- tected, and the moral drawn at once from it. He shakes his head at the large trees that stand in the hedges, whose drip must assist the growth of moss and spoil the hedges, though acknowledging their usefulness and beauty. We suppose Kalm became reconciled to the disposition of large trees round fields, particularly as he spent most of his time in the neighbourhood of London, where he saw the finest meadow-land and the finest timber in all England. A good botanist, he spent a couple of hours ransacking the hay in a " lathe," to ascertain the con- stituent grasses, as the stubs in the meadow were too short to repay an examination ; and painstaking and accurate to a degree, he notes what kind of timber predominated and what the hedges consisted of, pointing out the special excellence of beechen hedges in winter, and lamenting that in Sweden the winters would prove too much for the beautiful hollies. He records at Gravesend that lucerne was being tried for the first time ; at Little Gaddesden it was not thought worth while to grow it. That useful in- strument, the pick, was new to him ; and his assistant, Lars Jungstrom, depicts it, as well as the various gate-fastenings and other tools new to the Swedish eye. These and other drawings show that Jungstrom was sufficiently "adroit in de- lineating all sorts of things by mechanical drawing," though they have an archaic directness about them. It remains to be said that Kahn's geological notes are as accurate as his botanical ; he measures the strata (Tertiary) with as much care as he describes farms. The identification, Mr. Lucas says, of the plants would have been hopeless but for the existence of Kalm's authorities in the British Museum with notes collating the names with the later Lintwan names. Certainly no book of its time has described English farming so faithfully in all its branches as Kalm's Visa to Eng- land. Mr. Lucas has verified on the ground most of Kalm's words. We wish that Kelm had given us more of his delightful social descriptions. We have quoted one, but another describing English meals is quite as terse and incisive. He insists upon our fondness for roast-meat—he believes no Englishman who was his own master would have a meal without it—and he says we understand almost better than any other people the art of roasting a joint. This and its " fatness " and " delicious taste," which he puts down to the pasture, or some secret for fattening known to butchers, or some other reason, distinguish English roast-meat above all others. We will conclude by stating that Pehr Kalm, praiseworthy in other respects, had not the " bump of reverence" strongly developed. He says the Coronation Chair was badly made, and that any old woman has a better in her cottage. The work of editing has been a labour of love to Mr. Lucas, who deserves universal thanks for publishing Kalm's Visit, and revealing a treasure hither- to unknown to Englishmen; one, indeed, which it has been impossible to do justice to in a mere abstract.
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