need mending; he travels from door to door, and may be seen sitting on a stool in the cart-house in the farmyard, tinkering on his small portable anvil, with two or three cottagers’ children—sturdy, yellow-haired youngsters—intently watching the mystery of the craft.
In despite of machine-sewn boots and their cheapness, the village cobbler is still an institution, and has a considerable number of patrons. The labourers working in the fields need a boot that will keep out the damp, and for that purpose it must be hand-sewn: the cobbler, having lived among them all his life, understands what is wanted better than the artisan of the cities, and knows how to stud the soles with nails and cover toe and heel with plates till the huge boot is literally iron-clad. Even the children wear boots which for their size are equally heavy: many of the working farmers also send theirs to be repaired. The only thing to be remembered in dealing with a village cobbler is, if you want a pair of boots, to order them six months beforehand, or you will be disappointed. The business occupies him about as long as it takes a shipwright to build a ship.
Under the trees of the lane that connects one part of the village with another stands a wooden post once stout now decaying; and opposite it at some distance the remnants of a second. This was a rope-walk, but has long since fallen into disuse; the tendency of the age having for a long time been to centralise industry of all kinds. It is true that of late years many manufacturers have found it profitable to remove their workshops from cities into the country, the rent of premises being so much less, water to be got by sinking a well, less rates, and wages a little cheaper. They retain a shop and office in the cities, but have the work done miles away. But even this is distinctly associated with centralisation. The workmen are merely paid human machines; they do not labour for their own hands in their own little shops at home, or as the rope-maker slowly walked backwards here, twisting the hemp under the elms of the lane, afterwards, doubtless, to take the manufactured article himself to market and offer his wares for sale from a stand in the street.
The millwright used to be a busy man here and there in the villages, but the railways take the wheat to the steam mills of cities, and where the water-mills yet run, ironwork has supplanted wood. In some few places still the women and girls are employed making gloves of a coarse kind, doing the work at home in their cottages; but the occupation is now chiefly carried on nearer to the great business centres than this. Another extinct trade is that of the bell foundry. One village situate in the hills hard by was formerly celebrated for the church bells cast there, many of which may be found in far distant towers ringing to this day.
Near the edge of the hill, just above the washpool, stands the village church. Old and grey as it is, yet the usage of the pool by the shepherds dates from still earlier days. Like some of the farmhouses further up among the hills, the tower is built of flints set in cement, which in the passage of time has become almost as hard as the flint itself. The art of chipping flint to a face for the purpose of making lines or patterns in walls used to be carried to great perfection, and even old garden walls may be seen so ornamented.
The tower is large and tall, and the church a great one; or so it appears in comparison with the small population of the place. But it may be that when it was built there were more inhabitants; for some signs remain that here—as in many other such villages—the people have decreased in numbers: the population has shifted elsewhere. An adjacent parish lying just under the downs has now not more than fifty inhabitants; yet in the olden time a church stood there—long since dismantled: the ancient churchyard is an orchard, no one being permitted to dig or plough the ground.
Entering the tower by the narrow nail-studded door, it is not so easy to ascend the winding geometrical stone staircase, in the confined space and the darkness, for the arrow-slits are choked with cobwebs and the dust of years. A faint fluttering sound comes from above, as of wings beating the air in a confined space—it is the jackdaws in the belfry; just as the starlings and swallows in the huge old-fashioned chimneys make a similar murmuring noise before they settle. Passing a slit or two—the only means of marking the height which has been reached—and the dull tick of the old clock becomes audible: slow and accompanied with a peculiar grating vibration, as if the frame of the antique works had grown tremulous with age. The dial-plate outside is square, placed at an angle to the perpendicular lines of the tower: the gilding of the hour-marks has long since tarnished and worn away before the storms, and they are now barely distinguishable; and it is difficult to tell the precise time by the solitary pointer, there being no minute hand.
Past another slit, and the narrow stone steps—you must take care to keep close to the outer wall where they are widest, for they narrow to the central pillar—are scooped out by the passage of feet during the centuries; some, too, are broken, and others are slippery with something that rolls and gives under the foot. It is a number of little sticks and twigs which have fallen down from the jackdaws’ nests above: higher up the steps are literally covered with them, so that you have to kick them aside before you can conveniently ascend. These sticks are nearly all of the same size, brown and black from age and the loss of the sap, the bark remaining on. It is surprising how the birds contrive to find so many suitable to their purpose, searching about under the trees; for they do not break them off, but take those that have fallen.
The best place for finding these sticks—and those the rooks use—is where a tree has been felled or a thick hedge cut some months before. In cutting up the smaller branches into faggots the men necessarily frequently step on them, and so break off innumerable twigs too short to be tied up in the bundle. After they have finished faggoting, the women rake up the fragments for their cottage fires; and later on, as the spring advances, the birds come for the remaining twigs, of which great quantities are left. These they pick up from among the grass; and it is noticeable that they like twigs that are dead but not decayed: they do not care for them when green, and reject them when rotten. Have they discovered that green wood shrinks in drying, and that rotten wood is untrustworthy? Rooks, jackdaws, and pigeons find their building materials in this way, where trees or hedges have been cut; yet even then it must require some patience. They use also a great deal of material rearranged from the nests of last year—that is, rooks and jackdaws.
Stepping out at last into the belfry, be careful how you tread; for the flooring is worm-eaten, and here and there planks are loose: keep your foot, if possible, on the beams, which at least are fixed. It is a giddy height to fall from down to the stone pavement below, where the ringers stand. Their ropes are bound round with list or cloth, or some such thing, for a better grasp for the hand. High as it is to this the first floor, if you should attempt to ring one of these bells, and forget to let the rope slip quickly, it will jerk you almost to the ceiling: thus many a man has broken his bones close to the font where he was christened as a child.
Against the wall up here are iron clamps to strengthen the ancient fabric, settling somewhat in its latter days; and, opening the worm-eaten door of the clock-case—the key stands in it—you may study the works of the old clock for a full hour, if so it please you; for the clerk is away labouring in the field, and his aged wife, who produced the key of the church and pointed the nearest way across the meadow, has gone to the spring. The ancient building, standing lonely on the hill, is utterly deserted; the creak of the boards under foot or the grate of the rusty hinge sounds hollow and gloomy. But a streak of sunlight enters from the arrow-slit, a bee comes in through the larger open windows with a low inquiring buzz; there is a chattering of sparrows, the peculiar shrill screech of the swifts, and a ‘jack-jack-daw-jack-daw’-ing outside. The sweet scent of clover and of mown grass comes upon the light breeze—mayhap the laughter of haymakers passing through the churchyard underneath to their work, and idling by the way as haymakers can idle.
The name of the maker on the clock shows that it was constructed in a little market town a few miles distant a century ago, before industries were centralised and local life began to lose its individuality. There are sparrows’ nests on the wooden case over it, and it is stopped now and then by feathers getting into the works: it matters nothing here; Festina lente is the village motto, and time is little regarded. So, if you wish, take a rubbing, with heelball borrowed from the
