Julie Moore - final PhD submission.pdf - University of Hertfordshire ...

as, ‘winter or summer he was never seen in an overcoat, a garment much too
effeminate for his taste.’ 240 The notice concluded with the words ‘this kindly and
cheery old English gentleman will be greatly missed,’ drawing for the reader a
mental picture which fitted with an understanding of just who a farmer should be. A
few months later, a notice appeared announcing the death of Alfred Nicholls, who
had been a tenant on the Woodhall estate for over thirty years, ‘a farmer of the good
old fashioned style’. 241 This sense of the ‘old fashioned farmer’, embodying all that
was good about rural England, was employed by others as a criticism of the
perceived failure of the contemporary man. In December 1880, the Herts Guardian
carried a report of a speech by Clare Sewell Read in London where he called upon
the English farmer to live in a style more comparable to his American counterpart if
he wanted to compete:
Let him fling away his luxuries, or his ‘comforts’ whichever
he may choose to call them; let him rise at four, labour with
his own hands, and eat the same food as his labourers; let
him think no more of hunting and shooting, or trips to the
seaside, or of entertaining his friends with champagne and
claret, and he need not be afraid of competition. 242
This brought a defence of the farmer from the newspaper’s editor which argued that
there was ‘not much amusement in going to market and selling his corn at a loss on
the cost of growing’, and went on,
Last year, Mr Bigg [of Stanstead Abbots] who farms his own
land, lost 30s an acre. Will close living make up for that? Will
rising at four in the morning make wheat crops good when the
bloom does not set? …. Will a farmer’s ‘eating the same food as
his labourers’ make up for these losses? Will giving up hunting
and shooting make up for this loss? 243
240 ‘Bishop Stortford – Death of Mr. James Laird’, HM, 5 th January 1895 p.3. The 1881 census
shows James Laird, aged 75, farming 400 acres at Laird’s Farm, Church End, Rickling
RG11/1816 ED8 F112.
241 ‘Bramfield’, HGAJ, 16 th March 1895 p.5.
242 ‘The Agriculturists’ Week’, HGAJ, 11 th December 1880 p.5.
243 The Agriculturists’ Week’, HGAJ, 11 th December 1880 p.5.
136