Ulverton by Adam Thorpe

return from market this day, I made way for a shearing team of twenty or so, who were white from head to foot from the dust of the road, on the way to Squire Norcoat’s, and who resembled the fleeces they were to relieve the sheep of.
    This day, July 1st, I made the girl lift her dress so that I might feel the belly. She is well filled, and ripe in the cheeks. She asks now for 8s, but I have remained firm. My wife has gone flueish, and remains abed. Dr Kemp inspected her stool this day, and pronounced it of a better colour than before. She is much disturbed this night by strains of music, which she believes to be of angelic origin, but which I have informed her (to no avail) has been carried by the breeze, this being south-easterly, from the concert at the Hall, that Lord and Lady Chalmers are giving for their heir’s coming-of-age, and is said to be very grand. I have seen lights moving in the trees, that are afar, yet there being no moon the merriment may be thus glimpsed, as well as heard.
    I write this late, and unsteadily. The rags from London arrived midday, in two carts, and I hesitated where to store them. I chose a cart-shed built before my grandfather’s time and half stoved-in by weather and time, but great enough for the purpose. The rags smelt strong, of vagrants, sweat and suchlike, and I was chary of touching them, fearing pox and so on, but the carter was keen for a 1d to unload, and did so. Hearing a noise, like that of an animal in distress, from the rear of the shed, where the wood abuts us, and is much given over to bramble and bedwine and pernicious shrubs, and is generally wild, some of it clinging to the shed wall, and pulling at the old bricks, I ventured round with a mattock, and saw between the leafy growth into an unexpected clearing, wherein my maid and a newish labourer taken on for the harvest were coupled, he crouched behind like a bull, she on her fours with her belly and dugs suspended, tupping as the beasts do. I stood fixed to my station, and they continued unawares, half-concealed by the wild growth, while the carter unloaded nearby, whistling. I confess I cried, and the noise disturbing them, they uncoupled, and grinned foolishly, and I drove off the labourer, by the name of Griffin, with my mattock, and he was much torn, it appeared, by the wild growth he fled through. I seized the maid by the shoulders, and shook her vigorously, whereupon she turned pale, and I left off. On enquiring why she should risk 7s and the child by bathing its head in another man’s seed, this being pernicious in the extreme to its health, even its life, she gave me notice of her intent to tell Parson Brazier (old fool though he be) of the true declination of the bellying, that her conscience might be appeased, and she might enter into the Kingdom of Heaven anywise. We agreed, therefore, to 9s. I am employing twelve old people from the village to chop up the rags upon a block set out for the purpose, which will cost circa 7d per hundred pieces. My head is full of pence and shillings this day, and the wet-heading of my heir by a common labourer hurts me greatly, but I must proceed gently. The stink of the rags is still about my person, much of it of smoke from the city, as well as of general poverty. I noted one shirt to have the stain of blood all down its front, whether from illness or some heinous action I will never fathom. I am keen to bury them, that they might go finnowy the quicker.
    Viewing all of my fields in turn, I note how the riper corn (or grass) lies at the headland, though the soil there be often poorer. This, says my cousin, who has come to inspect my rags, that are this day being chopped, is owing to the easier start the corn had under the lee of the hedge at the headlands, where the earth is warmer, because sheltered. The ears there lie full in the hull, where the rest of the field’s are not yet swollen. The advantages of enclosure are obvious, therefore, to even the stubbornest