The Weekly Machen
The following article is the thirteenth in a series by Arthur Machen for The Daily Express.
No Cattle Shows
Farmers Who Will Miss the Trip to ‘Lunnon’
by
Arthur Machen
November 4, 1918
So there is to be no Smithfield Cattle Show this year.
There will be a sense of loss in places wild and high and remote from London, in Dorset vales and on Highland mountain sides, The Islington Cattle Show—it is called Smithfield from a pious respect to antiquity—was in many cases the one strong link between the far fields and the heart of London town.
Once, I remember, I was going from the Dunster Woods, up to the heights of Exmoor under Dunkery, in radiant air, under a sky of glowing blue. It was such a day of summer that the green leaves of the trees gleamed like jewels, making one realise the truth of the doctrine that the whole universe is many coloured lights. And the old man who drove the trap was talking of how he had been to the show years before, how he spent three days in London and never was it for a fog that was like a black smoke, and a burning in it that made his eyes weep and his throat sore.
I knew a young man who neatly came to bad grief over the show. He was a Londoner and unacquainted with country ways, and so he did not know that sheep are sometimes “made up,” like their betters. Now this make-up, or raddle—I suppose it is the “no. 8” of the theatre in a different form—varies in its application in various districts. In one part the fleece may be raddled a deep red, in another the colour will be applied lightly and the sheep looks pale yellow.
The London lad came back to his office, and proposed to write a striking and informing article on the influence of breed on the colour of sheep.
At one show I was discussing bacon with a man from Cheshire, whose face was as round and red and jocund as a harvest moon.
It seems that the system of cuts varies different parts. The round man wishes me to understand exactly what he meant; and in an instant he had twirled me round and cut me up—theoretically, with his forefinger—into “sides” and “back” and “belly” in the admiration of a learned audience.
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darklybrightpress.com 
This was vivid – lovely and jolly by turns! By the time this article appeared, the war presumably looked like it was drawing pretty near its end – I wonder if there was a practical reason – or several – to do with transportation within Britain and with supplying meat to the troops abroad – which prevented the 1918 Show? The “Smithfield Show” Wikipedia article does not shed any light, here – though it does note “During and immediately after the Second World War, from 1939 to 1948, the show was not held; the Royal Agricultural Hall was requisitioned for the GPO [General Post Office] in 1943.”
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