Walks and talks of an American farmer in England (Part 2 of 2): In the years 1850-51.

About this book

"Walks and talks of an American farmer in England (Part 2 of 2)" by Olmsted is a travelogue of rural observation and social commentary written in the mid-19th century. It follows a young American farmer on foot through western and southern England, studying agriculture, village life, architecture, and public institutions. The narrative mixes vivid scenes with practical notes on farming (especially orchards and drainage) and frank reflections on class, religion, and reform, with occasional tips for budget travelers.

The opening of this work takes the narrator from Shrewsbury to Church Stretton and Ludlow, blending wry encounters and close rural observation. He haggles with an Irish guide over directions, samples Shrewsbury’s famed cakes, notes anglers’ coracles on the Severn, crosses bleak sheep-walks thick with gorse, and copies quirky epitaphs, before a comic taproom exchange with an ardent free-trader. A shoestring breakfast with a country carrier and a farcical roasting-jack mishap frame sketches of laborers dining on bread, bacon, and beer, and a graceful portrait of Ludlow’s castle, church, and lanes. Introduced to the Christian Brethren, he attends their plain worship, admires their charity, visits the poor-house where a bereaved mother refuses food, and continues across orchard country to farm kitchens, tidy stables, and trout streams. These scenes open into concise essays on English orcharding—mild climates and calcareous soils, canker, drainage, manures, pruning, and the debated “decay of varieties”—and even a Devonshire satire on wassailing. Notes on thatch, tile, and clay walls lead into Hereford, where generous hosts (including men who left military careers for conscience) exemplify a “primitive” Christian spirit. The section closes with a tour of a Pentonville-style prison—cells, exercise cranks, chapel boxes—prompting a sharp contrast between meticulous care for offenders and the neglect of public education, and a turn toward newer reform ideas such as Captain Maconochie’s mark system.