Baxter, a stationer at Lewes, showed me a _farmer"s account book_ which is a very complete thing of the kind. The Inns are good at Lewes, the people civil and not servile, and the charges really (considering the taxes) far below what one could reasonably expect.--From Lewes to Brighton the road winds along between the hills of the South Downs, which, in this mild weather, are mostly beautifully green even at this season, with flocks of sheep feeding on them.--Brighton itself lies in a valley cut across at one end by the sea, and its extension, or _Wen_, has swelled up the sides of the hills and has run some distance up the valley.--The first thing you see in approaching Brighton from Lewes is a splendid _horse-barrack_ on one side of the road, and a heap of low, shabby, nasty houses, irregularly built, on the other side. This is always the case where there is a barrack. How soon a Reformed Parliament would make both disappear! Brighton is a very pleasant place. For a _wen_ remarkably so. The _Kremlin_, the very name of which has so long been a subject of laughter all over the country, lies in the gorge of the valley, and amongst the old houses of the town. The grounds, which cannot, I think, exceed a couple or three acres, are surrounded by a wall neither lofty nor good-looking. Above this rise some trees, bad in sorts, stunted in growth, and dirty with smoke. As to the "palace" as the Brighton newspapers call it, the apartments appear to be all upon the ground floor; and, when you see the thing from a distance, you think you see a parcel of _cradle-spits_, of various dimensions, sticking up out of the mouths of so many enormous squat decanters. Take a square box, the sides of which are three feet and a half, and the height a foot and a half. Take a large Norfolk-turnip, cut off the green of the leaves, leave the stalks 9 inches long, tie these round with a string three inches from the top, and put the turnip on the middle of the top of the box. Then take four turnips of half the size, treat them in the same way, and put them on the corners of the box. Then take a considerable number of bulbs of the crown-imperial, the narcissus, the hyacinth, the tulip, the crocus, and others; let the leaves of each have sprouted to about an inch, more or less according to the size of the bulb; put all these, pretty promiscuously, but pretty thickly, on the top of the box. Then stand off and look at your architecture. There!
That"s "_a Kremlin_"! Only you must cut some church-looking windows in the sides of the box. As to what you ought to put _into_ the box, that is a subject far above my cut.--Brighton is naturally a place of resort for _expectants_, and a shifty ugly-looking swarm is, of course, a.s.sembled here. Some of the fellows, who had endeavoured to disturb our harmony at the dinner at Lewes, were parading, amongst this swarm, on the cliff. You may always know them by their lank jaws, the stiffeners round their necks, their hidden or _no_ shirts, their stays, their false shoulders, hips, and haunches, their half-whiskers, and by their skins, colour of veal kidney-suet, warmed a little, and then powdered with dirty dust.--These vermin excepted, the people at Brighton make a very fine figure. The trades-people are very nice in all their concerns. The houses are excellent, built chiefly with a blue or purple brick; and bow-windows appear to be the general taste. I can easily believe this to be a very healthy place: the open downs on the one side and the open sea on the other. No inlet, cove, or river; and, of course, no swamps.--I have spent this evening very pleasantly in a company of reformers, who, though plain tradesmen and mechanics, know I am quite satisfied, more about the questions that agitate the country, than any equal number of Lords.
_Kensington, Friday, 11 January, 1822._
Came home by the way of Cuckfield, Worth, and Red-Hill, instead of by Uckfield, Grinstead and G.o.dstone, and got into the same road again at Croydon. The roads being nearly parallel lines and at no great distance from each other, the soil is nearly the same, with the exception of the fine oak country between G.o.dstone and Grinstead, which does not go so far westward as my homeward bound road, where the land, opposite the spot just spoken of, becomes more of a moor than a clay, and though there are oaks, they are not nearly so fine as those on the other road.
The tops are flatter; the side _shoots_ are sometimes higher than the middle shoot; a certain proof that the _tap-root_ has met with something that it does not like.--I see (Jan. 15) that Mr. Curteis has thought it necessary to state in the public papers, that _he_ had _nothing to do_ with my being at the dinner at Battle! Who the Devil thought he had?
Why, was it not an ordinary; and had I not as much right there as he? He has said, too, that _he did not know_ that I was to be at the dinner.
How should he? Why was it necessary to apprise him of it any more than the porter of the inn? He has said, that he did not hear of any deputation to invite me to the dinner, and, "_upon inquiry_," cannot find that there was any. Have I said that there was any invitation at all? There was; but I have not said so. I went to the dinner for my half-crown like another man, without knowing, or caring, who would be at it. But, if Mr. Curteis thought it necessary to say so much, he might have said a little more. He might have said, that he twice addressed himself to me in a very peculiar manner, and that I never addressed myself to him except in answer; and, if he had thought "_inquiry_"
necessary upon this subject also, he might have found that, though always the first to speak or hold out the hand to a hard-fisted artisan or labourer, I never did the same to a man of rank or riches in the whole course of my life. Mr. Curteis might have said, too, that unless I had gone to the dinner, the party would, according to appearances, have been very _select_; that I found him at the head of one of the tables, with less than thirty persons in the room; that the number swelled up to about one hundred and thirty; that no person was at the other table; that I took my seat at it; and that that table became almost immediately crowded from one end to the other. To these Mr. Curteis, when his hand was in, might have added, that he turned himself in his chair and listened to my speech with the greatest attention; that he bade me, by name, good night, when he retired; that he took not a man away with him; and that the gentleman who was called on to replace him in the chair (whose name I have forgotten) had got from his seat during the evening to come and shake me by the hand. All these things Mr. Curteis might have said; but the fact is, he has been bullied by the base newspapers, and he has not been able to muster up courage to act the manly part, and which, too, he would have found to be the _wise_ part in the end. When he gave the toast "_more money and less taxes_," he turned himself towards me, and said, "That is a toast that I am sure _you approve of_, Mr. Cobbett." To which I answered, "It would be made good, Sir, if _members of Parliament would do their duty_."--I appeal to all the gentlemen present for the truth of what I say. Perhaps Mr. Curteis, in his heart, did not like to give my health. If that was the case, he ought to have left the chair, and retired. _Straight forward_ is the best course; and, see what difficulties Mr. Curteis has involved himself in by not pursuing it! I have no doubt that he was agreeably surprised when he saw and heard me. Why not _say_ then: "After all that has been said about Cobbett, he is a devilish pleasant, frank, and clever fellow, at any rate."--How much better this would have been, than to act the part that Mr. Curteis has acted.----The Editors of the _Brighton Chronicle and Lewes Express_ have, out of mere modesty, I dare say, fallen a little into Mr. Curteis"s strain. In closing their account (in their paper of the 15th) of the Lewes Meeting, they say that I addressed the company at some length, as reported in their Supplement published on Thursday the 10th. And then they think it necessary to add: "For OURSELVES, we can say, that we never saw Mr. Cobbett until the meeting at Battle." Now, had it not been for pure maiden-like bashfulness, they would, doubtless, have added, that when they did see me, they were profuse in expressions of their grat.i.tude to me for having merely _named their paper_ in my Register a thing, which, as I told them, I myself had forgotten. When, too, they were speaking, in reference to a speech made in the Hall, of "one of the finest specimens of oratory that has ever been given in any a.s.sembly," it was, without doubt, out of pure compa.s.sion for the perverted taste of their Lewes readers, that they suppressed the fact, that the agent of the paper at Lewes sent them word, that it was useless for them to send any account of the meeting, unless that account contained Mr. Cobbett"s speech; that he, the agent, could have sold a hundred papers that morning, if they had contained Mr.
Cobbett"s speech; but could not sell one without it. I myself, by mere accident, heard this message delivered to a third person by their agent at Lewes. And, as I said before, it must have been pure tenderness towards their readers that made the editors suppress a fact so injurious to the reputation of those readers in point of _taste_! However, at last, these editors seem to have triumphed over all feelings of this sort; for, having printed off a placard, advertising their Supplement, in which placard no mention was made of _me_, they, grown bold all of a sudden, took a _painting brush_, and in large letters put into their placard, "_Mr. Cobbett"s Speech at Lewes_;" so that, at a little distance, the placard seemed to relate to nothing else; and there was "the finest specimen of oratory" left to find its way into the world under the auspices of my rustic harangue. Good G.o.d! What will this world come to! We shall, by-and-bye, have to laugh at the workings of envy in the very worms that we breed in our bodies!--The fast-sinking Old Times news-paper, its cat-and-dog opponent the New Times, the Courier, and the Whig-Lawyer Tramper, called the "Traveller;" the fellows who conduct these vehicles; these wretched fellows, their very livers burning with envy, have hasted to inform their readers, that "they have authority to state that Lord Ashburnham and Mr. Fuller were not present at the dinner at Battle where Cobbett"s health was drunk." These fellows have now "authority" to state, that there were no two men who dined at Battle, that I should not prefer as companions to Lord Ashburnham and Mr.
Fuller, commonly called "Jack Fuller," seeing that I am no admirer of _lofty reserve_, and that, of all things on earth, I abhor a head like a drum, all noise and emptiness. These scribes have also "authority" to state, that they amuse me and the public too by declining rapidly in their sale from their exclusion of my country lectures, which have only begun. In addition to this The Tramper editor has "authority" to state, that one of his papers of 5th Jan. has been sent to the Register-office by post, with these words written on it: "This scoundrel paper has taken no notice of Mr. Cobbett"s speech." All these papers have "authority" to state beforehand, that they will insert no account of what shall take place, within these three or four weeks, at _Huntingdon_, at _Lynn_, at _Chichester_, and other places where I intend to be. And, lastly, the editors have full "authority" to state, that they may employ, without let or molestation of any sort, either private or public, the price of the last number that they shall sell in the purchase of hemp or ratsbane, as the sure means of a happy deliverance from their present state of torment.
HUNTINGDON JOURNAL: THROUGH WARE AND ROYSTON, TO HUNTINGDON.
_Royston, Monday morning, 21st Jan., 1822._
Came from London, yesterday noon, to this town on my way to Huntingdon.
My road was through Ware. Royston is just within the line (on the Cambridgeshire side), which divides Hertfordshire from Cambridgeshire.
On this road, as on almost all the others going from it, the enormous _Wen_ has swelled out to the distance of about six or seven miles.--The land till you come nearly to Ware which is in Hertfordshire, and which is twenty-three miles from the _Wen_, is chiefly a strong and deep loam, with the gravel a good distance from the surface. The land is good wheat-land; but I observed only three fields of Swedish turnips in the 23 miles, and no wheat drilled. The wheat is sown on ridges of great width here-and-there; sometimes on ridges of ten, at others on ridges of seven, on those of five, four, three, and even two, feet wide. Yet the bottom is manifestly not very wet generally; and that there is not a bottom of clay is clear from the poor growth of the oak trees. All the trees are shabby in this country; and the eye is incessantly offended by the sight of _pollards_, which are seldom suffered to disgrace even the meanest lands in Hampshire or Suss.e.x. As you approach Ware the bottom becomes chalk of a dirtyish colour, and, in some parts, far below the surface. After you quit Ware, which is a mere market town, the land grows by degrees poorer; the chalk lies nearer and nearer to the surface, till you come to the open common-fields within a few miles of Royston. Along here the land is poor enough. It is not the stiff red loam mixed with large blue-grey flints, lying upon the chalk, such as you see in the north of Hampshire; but a whitish sort of clay, with little yellow flattish stones amongst it; sure signs of a hungry soil.
Yet this land bears wheat sometimes.--Royston is at the foot of this high poor land; or, rather in a dell, the open side of which looks towards the North. It is a common market town. Not mean, but having nothing of beauty about it; and having on it, on three of the sides out of the four, those very ugly things, common-fields, which have all the nakedness, without any of the smoothness, of Downs.
_Huntingdon, Tuesday morning, 22nd Jan., 1822._
Immediately upon quitting Royston, you come along, for a considerable distance, with enclosed fields on the left and open common-fields on the right. Here the land is excellent. A dark, rich loam, free from stones, on chalk beneath at a great distance. The land appears, for a mile or two, to resemble that at and near Faversham in Kent, which I have before noticed. The fields on the left seem to have been enclosed by Act of Parliament; and they certainly are the most beautiful tract of _fields_ that I ever saw. Their extent may be from ten to thirty acres each.
Divided by quick-set hedges, exceedingly well planted and raised. The whole tract is nearly a perfect level. The cultivation neat, and the stubble heaps, such as remain out, giving a proof of great crops of straw, while, on land with a chalk bottom, there is seldom any want of a proportionate quant.i.ty of grain. Even here, however, I saw but few Swedish turnips, and those not good. Nor did I see any wheat drilled; and observed that, in many parts, the broad-cast sowing had been performed in a most careless manner, especially at about three miles from Royston, where some parts of the broad lands seemed to have had the seed flung along them with a shovel, while other parts contained only here and there a blade; or, at least, were so thinly supplied as to make it almost doubtful whether they had not been wholly missed. In some parts the middles only of the ridges were sown thickly. This is shocking husbandry. A Norfolk or a Kentish farmer would have sowed a bushel and a half of seed to the acre here, and would have had a far better plant of wheat.--About four miles, I think it is, from Royston you come to the estate of Lord Hardwicke. You see the house at the end of an avenue about two miles long, which, however, wants the main thing, namely, fine and lofty trees. The soil here begins to be a very stiff loam at top; clay beneath for a considerable distance; and, in some places, beds of yellow gravel with very large stones mixed in it. The land is generally cold; a great deal of draining is wanted; and yet the bottom is such as not to be favourable to the growth of the _oak_, of which sort I have not seen one _handsome_ tree since I left London. A grove, such as I saw at Weston in Herefordshire, would, here, be a thing to attract the attention of all ranks and all ages. What, then, would they say, on beholding a wood of Oaks, Hickories, Chestnuts, Walnuts, Locusts, Gum-trees, and Maples in America!--Lord Hardwicke"s avenue appears to be lined with Elms chiefly. They are shabby. He might have had _ash_; for the ash will grow _anywhere_; on sand, on gravel, on clay, on chalk, or in swamps. It is surprising that those who planted these rows of trees did not observe how well the ash grows here! In the hedge-rows, in the plantations, everywhere the ash is fine. The ash is the _hardiest_ of all our large trees. Look at trees on any part of the sea coast. You will see them all, even the firs, lean from the sea breeze, except the ash. You will see the oak _shaved up_ on the side of the breeze. But the ash stands upright, as if in a warm woody dell. We have no tree that attains a greater height than the ash; and certainly none that equals it in beauty of leaf. It bears pruning better than any other tree. Its timber is one of the most useful; and as underwood and fire-wood it far exceeds all others of English growth. From the trees of an avenue like that of Lord Hardwicke a hundred pounds worth of fuel might, if the trees were ash, be cut every year in prunings necessary to preserve the health and beauty of the trees. Yet, on this same land, has his lordship planted many acres of larches and firs. These appear to have been planted about twelve years. If instead of these he had planted ash, four years from the seed bed and once removed; had cut them down within an inch of the ground the second year after planting; and had planted them at four feet apart, he would now have had about six thousand ash-poles, on an average twelve feet long, on each acre of land in his plantation; which, at three-halfpence each, would have been worth somewhere nearly forty pounds an acre. He might now have cut the poles, leaving about 600 to stand upon an acre to come to trees; and while these were growing to timber, the underwood would, for poles, hoops, broom-sticks, spars, rods, and f.a.ggots, have been worth twenty-five or thirty pounds an acre every ten years. Can beggarly stuff, like larches and firs, ever be profitable to this extent? Ash is timber, fit for the wheelwright, at the age of twenty years, or less. What can you do with a rotten fir thing at that age?----This estate of Lord Hardwicke appears to be very large. There is a part which is, apparently, in his own hands, as, indeed, the whole must soon be, unless he give up all idea of rent, or, unless he can _choack off_ the fundholder or get again afloat on the sea of paper-money. In this part of his land there is a fine piece of _Lucerne_ in rows at about eighteen inches distant from each other. They are now manuring it with _burnt-earth_ mixed with some dung; and I see several heaps of burnt-earth hereabouts. The directions for doing this are contained in my _Year"s Residence_, as taught me by Mr. William Gauntlet, of Winchester.--The land is, all along here, laid up in those wide and high ridges, which I saw in Gloucestershire, going from Gloucester to Oxford, as I have already mentioned. These ridges are ploughed _back_ or _down_; but they are ploughed up again for every sowing.--At an Inn near Lord Hardwicke"s I saw the finest parcel of dove-house pigeons I ever saw in my life.--Between this place and Huntingdon is the village of Caxton, which very much resembles almost a village of the same size in _Picardy_, where I saw the women dragging harrows to harrow in the corn. Certainly this village resembles nothing English, except some of the rascally rotten boroughs in Cornwall and Devonshire, on which a just Providence seems to have entailed its curse.
The land just about here does seem to be really bad. The face of the country is naked. The few scrubbed trees that now-and-then meet the eye, and even the quick-sets, are covered with a yellow moss. All is bleak and comfortless; and, just on the most dreary part of this most dreary scene, stands almost opportunely, "_Caxton Gibbet_," tendering its friendly one arm to the pa.s.sers-by. It has recently been fresh-painted, and written on in conspicuous characters, for the benefit, I suppose, of those who cannot exist under the thought of wheat at four shillings a bushel.--Not far from this is a new house, which, the coachman says, belongs to a Mr. Cheer, who, if report speaks truly, is not, however, notwithstanding his name, guilty of the sin of making people either drunkards or gluttons. Certainly the spot, on which he has built his house, is one of the most ugly that I ever saw. Few spots have everything that you could wish to find; but this, according to my judgment, has everything that every man of ordinary taste would wish to avoid.--The country changes but little till you get quite to Huntingdon.
The land is generally quite open, or in large fields. Strong, wheat-land, that wants a good deal of draining. Very few turnips of any sort are raised; and, of course, few sheep and cattle kept. Few trees, and those scrubbed. Few woods, and those small. Few hills, and those hardly worthy of the name. All which, when we see them, make us cease to wonder, that this country is so famous for _fox-hunting_. Such it has doubtless been in all times, and to this circ.u.mstance Huntingdon, that is to say, Huntingdun, or Huntingdown, unquestionably owes its name; because _down_ does not mean _unploughed_ land, but open and _unsheltered_ land, and the Saxon word is _dun_.--When you come down near to the town itself, the scene suddenly, totally, and most agreeably, changes. The _River Ouse_ separates G.o.dmanchester from Huntingdon, and there is, I think, no very great difference in the population of the two. Both together do not make up a population of more than about five thousand souls. Huntingdon is a slightly built town, compared with Lewes, for instance. The houses are not in general so high, nor made of such solid and costly materials. The shops are not so large and their contents not so costly. There is not a show of so much business and so much opulence. But Huntingdon is a very clean and nice place, contains many elegant houses, and the environs are beautiful.
Above and below the bridge, under which the Ouse pa.s.ses, are the most beautiful, and by far the most beautiful, meadows that I ever saw in my life. The meadows at Lewes, at Guildford, at Farnham, at Winchester, at Salisbury, at Exeter, at Gloucester, at Hereford, and even at Canterbury, are nothing, compared with those of Huntingdon in point of beauty. Here are no reeds, here is no sedge, no unevennesses of any sort. Here are _bowling-greens_ of hundreds of acres in extent, with a river winding through them, full to the brink. _One_ of these meadows is the _race-course_; and so pretty a spot, so level, so smooth, so green, and of such an extent I never saw, and never expected to see. From the bridge you look across the valleys, first to the West and then to the East; the valleys terminate at the foot of rising ground, well set with trees, from amongst which church spires raise their heads here-and-there. I think it would be very difficult to find a more delightful spot than this in the world. To my fancy (and every one to his taste) the prospect from this bridge far surpa.s.ses that from Richmond Hill.--All that I have yet seen of Huntingdon I like exceedingly. It is one of those pretty, clean, unstenched, unconfined places that tend to lengthen life and make it happy.
JOURNAL: HERTFORDSHIRE, AND BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: TO ST. ALBANS, THROUGH EDGWARE, STANMORE, AND WATFORD, RETURNING BY REDBOURN, HEMPSTEAD, AND CHESHAM.
_Saint Albans, June 19, 1822._
From Kensington to this place, through Edgware, Stanmore, and Watford, the crop is almost entirely hay, from fields of permanent gra.s.s, manured by dung and other matter brought from the _Wen_. Near the Wen, where they have had the _first haul_ of the Irish and other perambulating labourers, the hay is all in rick. Some miles further down it is nearly all in. Towards Stanmore and Watford, a third, perhaps, of the gra.s.s remains to be cut. It is curious to see how the thing regulates itself.
We saw, all the way down, squads of labourers, of different departments, migrating from tract to tract; leaving the cleared fields behind them and proceeding on towards the work to be yet performed; and then, as to the cla.s.ses of labourers, the _mowers_, with their scythes on their shoulders, were in front, going on towards the standing crops, while the _haymakers_ were coming on behind towards the gra.s.s already cut or cutting. The weather is fair and warm; so that the public-houses on the road are pouring out their beer pretty fast, and are getting a good share of the wages of these thirsty souls. It is an exchange of beer for sweat; but the tax-eaters get, after all, the far greater part of the sweat; for, if it were not for the tax, the beer would sell for three-halfpence a pot instead of fivepence. Of this threepence-halfpenny the Jews and Jobbers get about twopence-halfpenny. It is curious to observe how the different labours are divided as to the _nations_. The mowers are all _English_; the haymakers all _Irish_. Scotchmen toil hard enough in Scotland; but when they go from home it is not to _work_, if you please. They are found in gardens, and especially in gentlemen"s gardens. Tying up flowers, picking dead leaves off exotics, peeping into melon-frames, publishing the banns of marriage between the "_male_" and "_female_" blossoms, tap-tap-tapping against a wall with a hammer that weighs half an ounce. They have backs as straight and shoulders as square as heroes of Waterloo; and who can blame them? The digging, the mowing, the carrying of loads, all the break-back and sweat-extracting work, they leave to be performed by those who have less _prudence_ than they have. The great purpose of human art, the great end of human study, is to obtain _ease_, to throw the burden of labour from our own shoulders, and fix it on those of others. The crop of hay is very large, and that part which is in, is in very good order. We shall have hardly any hay that is not fine and sweet; and we shall have it, carried to London, at less, I dare say, than 3_l._ a load, that is 18 cwt. So that here the _evil_ of "_over-production_" will be great indeed! Whether we shall have any projects for taking hay into _p.a.w.n_ is more than any of us can say; for, after what we have seen, need we be surprised if we were to hear it proposed to take b.u.t.ter and even milk into p.a.w.n. In after times, the mad projects of these days will become proverbial. The Oracle and the over-production men will totally supplant the _March-hare_.--This is, all along here, and especially as far as Stanmore, a very dull and ugly country: flat, and all gra.s.s-fields and elms. Few _birds_ of any kind, and few _constant_ labourers being wanted; scarcely any cottages and gardens, which form one of the great beauties of a country. Stanmore is on a hill; but it looks over a country of little variety, though rich. What a difference between the view here and those which carry the eye over the coppices, the corn-fields, the hop-gardens and the orchards of Kent! It is miserable land from Stanmore to Watford, where we get into Hertfordshire. Hence to Saint Albans there is generally chalk at bottom with a red tenacious loam at top, with flints, grey on the outside and dark blue within.
Wherever this is the soil, the wheat grows well. The crops, and especially that of the barley, are very fine and very forward. The wheat, in general, does not appear to be a heavy crop; but the ears seem as if they would be full from bottom to top; and we have had so much heat, that the grain is pretty sure to be plump, let the weather, for the rest of the summer, be what it may. The produce depends more on the weather, previous to the coming out of the ear, than on the subsequent weather. In the Northern parts of America, where they have, some years, not heat enough to bring the Indian Corn to perfection, I have observed that, if they have about fifteen days with the thermometer at _ninety_, before the ear makes its appearance, the crop never fails, though the weather may be ever so unfavourable afterwards. This allies with the old remark of the country people in England, that "_May_ makes or mars the wheat;" for it is in May that the ear and the grains are _formed_.
_Kensington, June 24, 1822._
Set out at four this morning for Redbourn, and then turned off to the Westward to go to High Wycombe, through Hempstead and Chesham. The _wheat_ is good all the way. The barley and oats good enough till I came to Hempstead. But the land along here is very fine: a red tenacious flinty loam upon a bed of chalk at a yard or two beneath, which, in my opinion, is the very best _corn land_ that we have in England. The fields here, like those in the rich parts of Devonshire, will bear perpetual gra.s.s. Any of them will become upland meadows. The land is, in short, excellent, and it is a real corn-country. The _trees_, from Redbourn to Hempstead are very fine; oaks, ashes, and beeches. Some of the finest of each sort, and the very finest ashes I ever saw in my life. They are in great numbers, and make the fields look most beautiful. No villanous things of the _fir-tribe_ offend the eye here.
The custom is in this part of Hertfordshire (and I am told it continues into Bedfordshire) to leave a _border_ round the ploughed part of the fields to bear gra.s.s and to make hay from, so that, the gra.s.s being now made into hay, every corn field has a closely mowed gra.s.s walk about ten feet wide all round it, between the corn and the hedge. This is most beautiful! The hedges are now full of the shepherd"s rose, honeysuckles, and all sorts of wild flowers; so that you are upon a gra.s.s walk, with this most beautiful of all flower gardens and shrubberies on your one hand, and with the corn on the other. And thus you go from field to field (on foot or on horseback), the sort of corn, the sort of underwood and timber, the shape and size of the fields, the height of the hedge-rows, the height of the trees, all continually varying. Talk of _pleasure-grounds_ indeed! What, that man ever invented, under the name of pleasure-grounds, can equal these fields in Hertfordshire?--This is a profitable system too; for the ground under hedges bears little corn, and it bears very good gra.s.s. Something, however, depends on the nature of the soil: for it is not all land that will bear gra.s.s, fit for hay, perpetually; and, when the land will not do that, these headlands would only be a harbour for weeds and couch-gra.s.s, the seeds of which would fill the fields with their mischievous race.--Mr. TULL has observed upon the great use of headlands.--It is curious enough, that these headlands cease soon after you get into Buckinghamshire. At first you see now-and-then a field _without_ a gra.s.s headland; then it comes to now-and-then a field _with_ one; and, at the end of five or six miles, they wholly cease. Hempstead is a very pretty town, with beautiful environs, and there is a ca.n.a.l that comes near it, and that goes on to London. It lies at the foot of a hill. It is clean, substantially built, and a very pretty place altogether. Between Hempstead and Chesham the land is not so good. I came into Buckinghamshire before I got into the latter place. Pa.s.sed over two commons. But, still, the land is not bad.
It is drier; nearer the chalk, and not so red. The wheat continues good, though not heavy; but the barley, on the land that is not very good, is light, begins to look _blue_, and the backward oats are very short. On the still thinner lands the barley and oats must be a very short crop.--People do not sow _turnips_, the ground is so dry, and, I should think, that the _Swede-crop_ will be very short; for _Swedes_ ought to be _up_ at least by this time. If I had Swedes to sow, I would sow them now, and upon ground very deeply and finely broken. I would sow directly after the plough, not being half an hour behind it, and would roll the ground as hard as possible. I am sure the plants would come up, even without rain. And, the moment the rain came, they would grow famously.--Chesham is a nice little town, lying in a deep and narrow valley, with a stream of water running through it. All along the country that I have come the labourers" dwellings are good. They are made of what they call _brick-nog_; that is to say, a frame of wood, and a single brick thick, filling up the vacancies between the timber. They are generally covered with tile. Not _pretty_ by any means; but they are good; and you see here, as in Kent, Susses, Surrey, and Hampshire, and, indeed, in almost every part of England, that most interesting of all objects, that which is such an honour to England, and that which distinguishes it from all the rest of the world, namely, those _neatly kept and productive little gardens round the labourers" houses_, which are seldom unornamented with more or less of flowers. We have only to look at these to know what sort of people English labourers are: these gardens are the answer to the _Malthuses_ and the _Scarletts_. Shut your mouths, you Scotch Economists; cease bawling, Mr. Brougham, and you Edinburgh Reviewers, till _you_ can show us something, not _like_, but approaching towards a likeness of _this_!
The orchards all along this country are by no means bad. Not like those of Herefordshire and the north of Kent; but a great deal better than in many other parts of the kingdom. The cherry-trees are pretty abundant and particularly good. There are not many of the _merries_, as they call them in Kent and Hampshire; that is to say, the little black cherry, the name of which is a corruption from the French, _merise_, in the singular, and _merises_ in the plural. I saw the little boys, in many places, set to keep the birds off the cherries, which reminded me of the time when I followed the same occupation, and also of the toll that I used to take in payment. The children are all along here, I mean the little children, locked out of the doors, while the fathers and mothers are at work in the fields. I saw many little groups of this sort; and this is one advantage of having plenty of room on the outside of a house. I never saw the country children better clad, or look cleaner and fatter than they look here, and I have the very great pleasure to add, that I do not think I saw three acres of _potatoes_ in this whole tract of fine country, from St. Albans to Redbourn, from Redbourn to Hempstead, and from Hempstead to Chesham. In all the houses where I have been, they use the roasted rye instead of coffee or tea, and I saw one gentleman who had sown a piece of rye (a grain not common in this part of the country) for the express purpose. It costs about three farthings a pound, roasted and ground into powder.--The pay of the labourers varies from eight to twelve shillings a-week. Gra.s.s mowers get two shillings a-day, two quarts of what they call strong beer, and as much small beer as they can drink. After quitting Chesham, I pa.s.sed through a wood, resembling, as nearly as possible, the woods in the more cultivated parts of Long Island, with these exceptions, that there the woods consist of a great variety of trees, and of more beautiful foliage. Here there are only two sorts of trees, beech and oak: but the wood at bottom was precisely like an American wood: none of that stuff which we generally call underwood: the trees standing very thick in some places: the shade so complete as never to permit herbage below: no bushes of any sort; and nothing to impede your steps but little spindling trees here and there grown up from the seed. The trees here are as lofty, too, as they generally are in the Long Island woods, and as straight, except in cases where you find clumps of the tulip-tree, which sometimes go much above a hundred feet high as straight as a line.
The oaks seem here to vie with the beeches, in size as well as in loftiness and straightness. I saw several oaks which I think were more than eighty feet high, and several with a clear stem of more than forty feet, being pretty nearly as far through at that distance from the ground as at bottom; and I think I saw more than one, with a clear stem of fifty feet, a foot and a half through at that distance from the ground. This is by far the finest _plank oak_ that I ever saw in England. The road through the wood is winding and brings you out at the corner of a field, lying sloping to the south, three sides of it bordered by wood and the field planted as an orchard. This is precisely what you see in so many thousands of places in America. I had pa.s.sed through Hempstead a little while before, which certainly gave its name to the Township in which I lived in Long Island, and which I used to write _Hampstead_, contrary to the orthography of the place, never having heard of such a place as _Hempstead_ in England. Pa.s.sing through Hempstead I gave my mind a toss back to Long Island, and this beautiful wood and orchard really made me almost conceit that I was there, and gave rise to a thousand interesting and pleasant reflections. On quitting the wood I crossed the great road from London to Wendover, went across the park of Mr. Drake, and up a steep hill towards the great road leading to Wycombe. Mr. Drake"s is a very beautiful place, and has a great deal of very fine timber upon it. I think I counted pretty nearly 200 oak trees, worth, on an average, five pounds a-piece, growing within twenty yards of the road that I was going along. Mr. Drake has some thousands of these, I dare say, besides his beech; and, therefore, _he_ will be able to stand a tug with the fundholders for some time.
When I got to High Wycombe, I found everything a week earlier than in the rich part of Hertfordshire. High Wycombe, as if the name was ironical, lies along the bottom of a narrow and deep valley, the hills on each side being very steep indeed. The valley runs somewhere about from east to west, and the wheat on the hills facing the south will, if this weather continue, be fit to reap in ten days. I saw one field of oats that a bold farmer would cut next Monday. Wycombe is a very fine and very clean market town; the people all looking extremely well; the girls somewhat larger featured and larger boned than those in Suss.e.x, and not so fresh-coloured and bright-eyed. More like the girls of America, and that is saying quite as much as any reasonable woman can expect or wish for. The Hills on the south side of Wycombe form a park and estate now the property of Smith, who was a banker or stocking-maker at Nottingham, who was made a Lord in the time of Pitt, and who purchased this estate of the late Marquis of Landsdowne, one of whose t.i.tles is Baron Wycombe. Wycombe is one of those famous things called Boroughs, and 34 votes in this Borough send Sir John Dashwood and Sir Thomas Baring to the "collective wisdom." The landlord where I put up "_remembered_" the name of Dashwood, but had "_forgotten_" who the "_other_" was! There would be no forgettings of this sort, if these thirty-four, together with _their_ representatives, were called upon to pay the share of the National Debt due from High Wycombe. Between High Wycombe and Beaconsfield, where the soil is much about that last described, the wheat continued to be equally early with that about Wycombe. As I approached Uxbridge I got off the chalk upon a gravelly bottom, and then from Uxbridge to Shepherd"s Bush on a bottom of clay.
Gra.s.s-fields and elm-trees, with here and there a wheat or a bean-field, form the features of this most ugly country, which would have been perfectly unbearable after quitting the neighbourhoods of Hempstead, Chesham and High Wycombe, had it not been for the diversion I derived from meeting, in all the various modes of conveyance, the c.o.c.kneys going to _Ealing Fair_, which is one of those things which nature herself would almost seem to have provided for drawing off the matter and giving occasional relief to the overcharged _Wen_. I have traversed to-day what I think may be called an average of England as to corn-crops. Some of the best, certainly; and pretty nearly some of the worst. My observation as to the wheat is, that it will be a fair and average crop, and extremely early; because, though it is not a heavy crop, though the ears are not long they will be full; and the earliness seems to preclude the possibility of blight, and to ensure plump grain.
The barley and oats must, upon an average, be a light crop. The peas a light crop; and as to beans, unless there have been rains where beans are mostly grown, they cannot be half a crop; for they will not endure heat. I tried masagan beans in Long Island, and could not get them to bear more than a pod or two upon a stem. Beans love cold land and shade.
The earliness of the harvest (for early it must be) is always a clear advantage. This fine summer, though it may not lead to a good crop of turnips, has already put safe into store such a crop of hay as I believe England never saw before. Looking out of the window, I see the harness of the Wiltshire wagon-horses (at this moment going by) covered with the chalk-dust of that county; so that the fine weather continues in the West. The saint-foin hay has all been got in, in the chalk countries, without a drop of wet; and when that is the case, the farmers stand in no need of oats. The gra.s.s crops have been large everywhere, as well as got in in good order. The fallows must be in excellent order. It must be a sloven indeed that will sow his wheat in foul ground next autumn; and the sun, where the fallows have been well stirred, will have done more to enrich the land than all the dung-carts and all the other means employed by the hand of man. Such a summer is a great blessing; and the only draw-back is, the dismal apprehension of not seeing such another for many years to come. It is favourable for poultry, for colts, for calves, for lambs, for young animals of all descriptions, not excepting the game. The partridges will be very early. They are now getting into the roads with their young ones, to roll in the dust. The first broods of partridges in England are very frequently killed by the wet and cold; and this is one reason why the game is not so plenty here as it is in countries more blest with sun. This will not be the case this year; and, in short, this is one of the finest years that I ever knew.
WM. COBBETT.
RURAL RIDE, OF 104 MILES, FROM KENSINGTON TO UPHUSBAND; INCLUDING A RUSTIC HARANGUE AT WINCHESTER, AT A DINNER WITH THE FARMERS, ON THE 28TH SEPTEMBER.
_Chilworth, near Guildford, Surrey, Wednesday, 25th Sept., 1822._
This morning I set off, in rather a drizzling rain, from Kensington, on horseback, accompanied by my son, with an intention of going to Uphusband, near Andover, which is situated in the North West corner of Hampshire. It is very true that I could have gone to Uphusband by travelling only about 66 miles, and in the s.p.a.ce of about eight hours.
But my object was not to see inns and turnpike-roads, but to see the _country_; to see the farmers at home, and to see the labourers in the fields; and to do this you must go either on foot or on horse-back. With a gig you cannot get about amongst bye-lanes and across fields, through bridle-ways and hunting-gates; and to _tramp it_ is too slow, leaving the labour out of the question, and that is not a trifle.
We went through the turnpike-gate at Kensington, and immediately turned down the lane to our left, proceeded on to Fulham, crossed Putney bridge into Surrey, went over Barnes Common, and then, going on the upper side of Richmond, got again into Middles.e.x by crossing Richmond bridge. All Middles.e.x is _ugly_, notwithstanding the millions upon millions which it is continually sucking up from the rest of the kingdom; and, though the Thames and its meadows now-and-then are seen from the road, the country is not less ugly from Richmond to Chertsey bridge, through Twickenham, Hampton, Sunbury, and Sheperton, than it is elsewhere. The soil is a gravel at bottom with a black loam at top near the Thames; further back it is a sort of spewy gravel; and the buildings consist generally of tax-eaters" showy, tea-garden-like boxes, and of shabby dwellings of labouring people who, in this part of the country, look to be about half _Saint Giles"s_: dirty, and have every appearance of drinking gin.
At Chertsey, where we came into Surrey again, there was a Fair for horses, cattle, and pigs. I did not see any sheep. Everything was exceedingly _dull_. Cart colts, two and three years old, were selling for _less than a third_ of what they sold for in 1813. The cattle were of an inferior description to be sure; but the price was low almost beyond belief. Cows, which would have sold for 15_l._ in 1813, did not get buyers at 3_l._ I had no time to inquire much about the pigs, but a man told me that they were dirt-cheap. Near Chertsey is _Saint Anne"s Hill_ and some other pretty spots. Upon being shown this hill I was put in mind of Mr. Fox; and that brought into my head a grant that he obtained of _Crown lands_ in this neighbourhood, in, I think, 1806. The Duke of York obtained, by Act of Parliament, a much larger grant of these lands, at Oatlands, in 1804, I think it was. But this was natural enough; this is what would surprise n.o.body. Mr. Fox"s was another affair; and especially when taken into view with what I am now going to relate. In 1804 or 1805, Fordyce, the late d.u.c.h.ess of Gordon"s brother, was Collector General (or had been) of taxes in Scotland, and owed a large arrear to the public. He was also Surveyor of Crown lands. The then Opposition were for hauling him up. Pitt was again in power. Mr.
Creevey was to bring forward the motion in the House of Commons, and Mr.
Fox was to support it, and had actually spoken once or twice, in a preliminary way on the subject. Notice of the motion was regularly given; it was put off from time to time, and, at last, _dropped_, Mr.
Fox _declining_ to support it. I have no books at hand; but the affair will be found recorded in the Register. It was not owing to Mr. Creevey that the thing did not come on. I remember well that it was owing to Mr.
Fox. Other motives were stated; and those others might be the real motives; but, at any rate, the next year, or the year after, Mr. Fox got transferred to him a part of that estate, which belongs to the _public_, and which was once so great, called the _Crown lands_; and of these lands Fordyce long had been, and then was, the Surveyor. Such are the facts: let the reader reason upon them and draw the conclusion.
This county of Surrey presents to the eye of the traveller a greater contrast than any other county in England. It has some of the very best and some of the worst lands, not only in England, but in the world. We were here upon those of the latter description. For five miles on the road towards Guildford the land is a rascally common covered with poor heath, except where the gravel is so near the top as not to suffer even the heath to grow. Here we entered the enclosed lands, which have the gravel at bottom, but a nice light, black mould at top; in which the trees grow very well. Through bye-lanes and bridle-ways we came out into the London road, between Ripley and Guildford, and immediately crossing that road, came on towards a village called Merrow. We came out into the road just mentioned, at the lodge-gates of a Mr. Weston, whose mansion and estate have just pa.s.sed (as to occupancy) into the hands of some new man. At Merrow, where we came into the Epsom road, we found that Mr.
Webb Weston, whose mansion and park are a little further on towards London, had just walked out, and left it in possession of another new man. This gentleman told us, last year, at the _Epsom Meeting_, that he was _losing his income_; and I told him _how it was_ that he was losing it! He is said to be a very worthy man; very much respected; a very good landlord; but, I dare say, he is one of those who approved of yeomanry cavalry to keep down the "Jacobins and Levellers;" but who, in fact, as I always told men of this description, have _put down_ themselves and their landlords; for without them this thing never could have been done.
To ascribe the whole to _contrivance_ would be to give to Pitt and his followers too much credit for profundity; but if the knaves who a.s.sembled at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, in 1793, to put down, by the means of prosecutions and spies, those whom they called "Republicans and Levellers;" if these knaves had said, "Let us go to work to induce the owners and occupiers of the land to convey their estates and their capital into our hands," and if the Government had corresponded with them in views, the effect could not have been more complete than it has, thus far, been. The yeomanry actually, as to the effect, drew their swords to keep the reformers at bay, while the tax-eaters were taking away the estates and the capital. It was the sheep surrendering up the dogs into the hands of the wolves.
Lord Onslow lives near Merrow. This is the man that was, for many years, so famous as a driver of four-in-hand. He used to be called _Tommy Onslow_. He has the character of being a very good landlord. I know he called me "a d----d _Jacobin_" several years ago, only, I presume, because I was labouring to preserve to him the means of still driving four-in-hand, while he, and others like him, and their yeomanry cavalry, were working as hard to defeat my wishes and endeavours. They say here, that, some little time back, his Lordship, who has, at any rate, had the courage to retrench in all sorts of ways, was at Guildford in a gig with one horse, at the very moment, when Spicer, the Stock-broker, who was a Chairman of the Committee for prosecuting Lord Cochrane, and who lives at Esher, came rattling in with four horses and a couple of out-riders!
They relate an observation made by his Lordship, which may, or may not, be true, and which therefore, I shall not repeat. But, my Lord, there is another sort of courage; courage other than that of retrenching, that would become you in the present emergency: I mean _political_ courage, and especially the courage of _acknowledging your errors_; confessing that you were wrong when you called the reformers Jacobins and levellers; the courage of now joining them in their efforts to save their country, to regain their freedom, and to preserve to you your estate, which is to be preserved, you will observe, by no other means than that of a Reform of the Parliament. It is now manifest, even to fools, that it has been by the instrumentality of a base and fraudulent paper-money that loan-jobbers, stock-jobbers and Jews have got the estates into their hands. With what eagerness, in 1797, did the n.o.bility, gentry, and clergy rush forward to give their sanction and their support to the system which then began, and which has finally produced, what we now behold! They a.s.sembled in all the counties, and put forth declarations that they would take the paper of the Bank, and that they would support the system. Upon this occasion the county of Surrey was the very first county; and on the list of signatures the very _first_ name was _Onslow_! There may be sales and conveyances; there may be recoveries, deeds, and other parchments; but this was the real transfer; this was the real signing away of the estates.
To come to Chilworth, which lies on the south side of St. Martha"s Hill, most people would have gone along the level road to Guildford and come round through Shawford under the hills; but we, having seen enough of streets and turnpikes, took across over Merrow Down, where the Guildford race-course is, and then mounted the "Surrey Hills," so famous for the prospects they afford. Here we looked back over Middles.e.x, and into Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, away towards the North-West, into Ess.e.x and Kent towards the East, over part of Suss.e.x to the South, and over part of Hampshire to the West and South-West. We are here upon a bed of chalk, where the downs always afford good sheep food. We steered for St.
Martha"s Chapel, and went round at the foot of the lofty hill on which it stands. This brought us down the side of a steep hill, and along a bridle-way, into the narrow and exquisitely beautiful vale of Chilworth, where we were to stop for the night. This vale is skirted partly by woodlands and partly by sides of hills tilled as corn fields. The land is excellent, particularly towards the bottom. Even the arable fields are in some places, towards their tops, nearly as steep as the roof of a tiled house; and where the ground is covered with woods the ground is still more steep. Down the middle of the vale there is a series of ponds, or small _lakes_, which meet your eye, here and there, through the trees. Here are some very fine farms, a little strip of meadows, some hop-gardens, and the lakes have given rise to the establishment of powder-mills and paper-mills. The trees of all sorts grow well here; and coppices yield poles for the hop-gardens and wood to make charcoal for the powder-mills.
They are sowing wheat here, and the land, owing to the fine summer that we have had, is in a very fine state. The rain, too, which, yesterday, fell here in great abundance, has been just in time to make a really good wheat-sowing season. The turnips, all the way that we have come, are good. Rather backward in some places; but in sufficient quant.i.ty upon the ground, and there is yet a good while for them to grow. All the fall fruit is excellent, and in great abundance. The grapes are as good as those raised under gla.s.s. The apples are much richer than in ordinary years. The crop of hops has been very fine here, as well as everywhere else. The crop not only large, but good in quality. They expect to get _six_ pounds a hundred for them at Weyhill fair. That is _one_ more than I think they will get. The best Suss.e.x hops were selling in the Borough of Southwark at three pounds a hundred a few days before I left London.
The Farnham hops _may_ bring double that price; but that, I think, is as much as they will; and this is ruin to the hop-planter. The _tax_, with its attendant inconveniences, amounts to a pound a hundred; the picking, drying, and bagging, to 50_s._ The carrying to market not less than 5_s._ Here is the sum of 3_l._ 10_s._ of the money. Supposing the crop to be half a ton to the acre, the bare tillage will be 10_s._ The poles for an acre cannot cost less than 2_l._ a-year; that is another 4_s._ to each hundred of hops. This brings the outgoings to 82_s._ Then comes the manure, then come the poor-rates, and road-rates, and county rates; and if these leave one single farthing for _rent_ I think it is strange.
I hear that Mr. Birkbeck is expected home from America! It is said that he is coming to receive a large legacy; a thing not to be overlooked by a person who lives in a country where he can have _land for nothing_!
The truth is, I believe, that there has lately died a gentleman, who has bequeathed a part of his property to pay the creditors of a relation of his who some years ago became a bankrupt, and one of whose creditors Mr.
Birkbeck was. What the amount may be I know not; but I have heard, that the bankrupt had a _partner_ at the time of the bankruptcy; so that there must be a good deal of difficulty in settling the matter in an equitable manner. The _Chancery_ would drawl it out (supposing the present system to continue) till, in all human probability, there would not be as much left for Mr. Birkbeck as would be required to pay his way back again to the Land of Promise. I hope he is coming here to remain here. He is a very clever man, though he has been very abusive and very unjust with regard to me.