Rural Rides Read online

  The country from FRANT to LAMBERHURST is very woody. I should think five-tenths woods and three grass. The corn, what there is of it, is about the same as farther back. I saw a hop-garden just before I got to LAMBERHURST, which will have about two or three hundred weight to the acre.

  This LAMBERHURST is a very pretty place. It lies in a valley with beautiful hills round it. The pastures about here are very fine; and the roads are as smooth and as handsome as those in Windsor Park.

  From the last-mentioned place I had three miles to come to GOUDHURST, the tower of the church of which is pretty lofty of itself, and the church stands upon the very summit of one of the steepest and highest hills in this part of the country. The church-yard has a view of about twenty-five miles in diameter; and the whole is over a very fine country, though the character of the country differs little from that which I have before described.

  Before I got to GOUDHURST, I passed by the side of a village called HORSENDEN, and saw some very large hop-grounds away to my right. I should suppose there were fifty acres; and they appeared to me to look pretty well. I found that they belonged to a Mr SPRINGATE, and people say, that it will grow half as many hops as he grew last year, while people in general will not grow a tenth part so many. This hop growing and dealing have always been a gamble; and this puts me in mind of the horrible treatment which Mr WADDINGTON received on account of what was called his forestalling4 in hops! It is useless to talk: as long as that gentleman remains uncompensated for his sufferings, there can be no hope of better days. ELLENBOROUGH was his counsel; he afterwards became Judge; but, nothing was ever done to undo what KENYON had done. However, Mr WADDINGTON will, I trust, yet live to obtain justice. He has, in the meanwhile, given the THING now-and-then a blow; and he has the satisfaction to see it reel about like a drunken man.

  I got to GOUDHURST to breakfast, and, as I heard that the Dean of Rochester was to preach a sermon in behalf of the National Schools5 I stopped to hear him. In waiting for his Reverence I went to the Methodist Meeting-house, where I found the Sunday School boys and girls assembled, to the almost filling of the place, which was about thirty feet long and eighteen wide. The ‘Minister’ was not come, and the Schoolmaster was reading to the children out of a tract-book, and shaking the brimstone bag at them most furiously. This schoolmaster was a sleek-looking young fellow: his skin perfectly tight: well fed I’ll warrant him: and he has discovered the way of living, without work, on the labour of those that do work. There were 36 little fellows in smock-frocks, and about as many girls listening to him; and I dare say he eats as much meat as any ten of them. By this time the Dean, I thought, would be coming on; and, therefore, to the church I went; but to my great disappointment, I found that the parson was operating preparatory to the appearance of the Dean, who was to come on in the afternoon, when I, agreeably to my plan, must be off. The sermon was from 2 Chronicles, ch. 31. v. 21., and the words of this text described King Hezekiah as a most zealous man, doing whatever he did with all his heart.6 I write from memory, mind, and, therefore, I do not pretend to quote exact words; and I may be a little in error, perhaps, as to chapter or verse. The object of the preacher was to hold up to his hearers, the example of Hezekiah, and particularly in the case of the school affair. He called upon them to subscribe with all their hearts; but, alas! how little of persuasive power was there in what he said! No effort to make them see the use of the schools. No inducement proved to exist. No argument, in short, nor any thing to move. No appeal either to the reason, or to the feeling. All was general, common place, cold observation; and that, too, in language which the far greater part of the hearers could not understand. This church is about 110 feet long and 70 feet wide in the clear. It would hold three thousand people, and it had in it 214, besides 53 Sunday School or National School boys; and these sat together, in a sort of lodge, up in a corner, 16 feet long and 10 feet wide. Now, will any PARSON MALTHUS, or any body else, have the impudence to tell me, that this church was built for the use of a population not more numerous than the present? To be sure, when this church was built, there could be no idea of a methodist meeting coming to assist the church, and as little, I dare say, was it expected, that the preachers in the church would ever call upon the faithful to subscribe money to be sent up to one JOSHUA WATSON (living in a WEN) to be by him laid out in ‘promoting Christian knowledge’; but, at any rate, the Methodists cannot take away above four or five hundred; and what, then, was this great church built for, if there were no more people, in those days, at GOUDHURST, than there are now? It is very true, that the labouring people have, in a great measure, ceased to go to church. There were scarcely any of that class at this great country church to-day. I do not believe there were ten. I can remember when they were so numerous, that the parson could not attempt to begin, till the rattling of their nailed shoes ceased. I have seen, I am sure, five hundred boys and men in smock-frocks coming out of church at one time. To-day has been a fine day: there would have been many at church to-day, if ever there are; and here I have another to add to the many things that convince me, that the labouring classes have, in great part, ceased to go to church; that their way of thinking and feeling with regard to both church and clergy are totally changed; and that there is now very little moral hold which the latter possess. This preaching for money to support the schools is a most curious affair altogether. The king sends a circular letter to the BISHOPS (as I understand it) to cause subscriptions for the schools; and the bishops (if I am rightly told) tell the parish clergy to send the money, when collected, to JOSHUA WATSON, the Treasurer of a Society in the WEN, ‘for promoting Christian Knowledge’! What! the church and all its clergy put into motion to get money from the people, to send up to one Joshua Watson, a wine-merchant, or, late a wine-merchant, in Mincing Lane, Fenchurch-street, London, in order that the said wine-merchant may apply the money to the ‘promoting of Christian Knowledge’! What! all the deacons, priests, curates perpetual, vicars, rectors, prebends, doctors, deans, archdeacons and fathers in God, right reverend and most reverend; all! yea all, engaged in getting money together to send to a wine-merchant that he may lay it out in the promoting of Christian knowledge in their own flocks! Oh, brave wine-merchant! What a prince of godliness must this wine-merchant be! I say, wine-merchant, or late wine-merchant, of Mincing Lane, Fenchurch Street, London. And, for God’s sake, some good parson, do send me up a copy of the King’s circular, and also of the bishop’s order to send the money to JOSHUA WATSON; for some precious sport we will have with JOSHUA and his ‘Society’ before we have done with them!

  After ‘service’ I mounted my horse and jogged on through MILKHOUSE STREET to BENENDEN, where I passed through the estate, and in sight of the house of Mr HODGES. He keeps it very neat and has planted a good deal. His ash do very well; but, the chesnut do not, as it seems to me. He ought to have the AMERICAN chesnut, if he have any. If I could discover an everlasting hop-pole, and one, too, that would grow faster even than the ash, would not these Kentish hop-planters put me in the Kalendar along with their famous Saint Thomas of Canterbury? We shall see this, one of these days.

  Coming through the village of BENENDEN, I heard a man, at my right, talking very loud about houses! houses! houses! It was a Methodist parson, in a house, close by the road side. I pulled up, and stood still, in the middle of the road, but looking, in silent soberness, into the window (which was open) of the room in which the preacher was at work. I believe my stopping radier disconcerted him; for he got into shocking repetition. ‘Do you KNOW,’ said he, laying great stress on the word KNOW: ‘do you KNOW, that you have ready for you houses, houses I say; I say do you KNOW; do you KNOW that you have houses in the heavens not made with hands?7 Do you KNOW this from experience? Has the blessed Jesus told you so?’ And, on he went to say, that, if Jesus had told them so, they would be saved, and that if he had not, and did not, they would be damned. Some girls whom I saw in the room, plump and rosy as could be, did not seem at all daunted by these menaces; and indeed, t
hey appeared to me to be thinking much more about getting houses for themselves in this world first: just to see a little before they entered, or endeavoured to enter, or even thought much about, those ‘houses’ of which the parson was speaking: houses with pig-styes and little snug gardens attached to them, together with all the other domestic and conjugal circumstances, these girls seemed to me to be preparing themselves for. The truth is, these fellows have no power on the minds of any but the miserable.8

  Scarcely had I proceeded a hundred yards from the place where this fellow was bawling, when I came to the very situation which he ought to have occupied, I mean the stocks, which the people of BENENDEN have, with singular humanity, fitted up with a bench, so that the patient, while he is receiving the benefit of the remedy, is not exposed to the danger of catching cold by sitting, as in other places, upon the ground, always damp, and sometimes actually wet. But, I would ask the people of BENENDEN what is the use of this humane precaution, and, indeed, what is the use of the stocks themselves, if, while a fellow is ranting and bawling in the manner just described, at the distance of a hundred yards from the stocks, the stocks (as is here actually the case) are almost hidden by grass and nettles? This, however, is the case all over the country; not netdes and grass indeed smothering the stocks, but, I never see any feet peeping through the holes, any where, though I find Methodist parsons every where, and though the law compels the parishes to keep up all the pairs of stocks that exist in all parts of them; and, in some parishes, they have to keep up several pairs. I am aware, that a good part of the use of the stocks is the terror they ought to produce. I am not supposing, that they are of no use because not continually furnished with legs. But, there is a wide difference between always and never; and it is clear, that a fellow, who has had the stocks under his eye all his lifetime, and has never seen a pair of feet peeping through them, will stand no more in awe of the stocks than rooks do of an old shoyhoy,9 or than the Ministers or their agents do of Hobhouse and Burdett. Stocks that never pinch a pair of ancles are like ministerial responsibility; a thing to talk about, but for no other use; a mere mockery; a thing laughed at by those whom it is intended to keep in check. It is time that the stocks were again in use, or that the expense of keeping them up were put an end to. This mild, this gentle, this good-humoured sort of correction is not enough for our present rulers. But, mark the consequence; gaols ten times as big as formerly; houses of correction; treadmills; the hulks; and the country filled with spies of one sort and another, game-spies, or other spies, and if a hare or pheasant come to an untimely death, police-officers from the WEN are not unfrequently called down to find out and secure the bloody offender! Mark this, Englishmen! Mark how we take to those things, which we formerly ridiculed in the French; and take them up too just as that brave and spirited people have shaken them off! I saw, not long ago, an account of a WEN police-officer being sent into the country, where he assumed a disguise, joined some poachers (as they are called), got into their secrets, went out in the night with them, and then (having laid his plans with the game-people) assisted to take them and convict them. What! is this England? Is this the land of ‘manly hearts’? Is this the country that laughed at the French for their submissions? What! are police-officers kept for this? Does the law say so? However, thank God Almighty, the estates are passing away into the hands of those who have had borrowed from them the money to uphold this monster of a system. The Debt! The blessed Debt, will, at last, restore to us freedom.

  Just after I quitted BENENDEN, I saw some bunches of straw lying upon the quickset hedge of a cottage garden. I found, upon inquiry, that they were bunches of the straw of grass. Seeing a face through the window of the cottage, I called out and asked what that straw was for. The person within said, it was to make Leghorn-plat with. I asked him (it was a young man) how he knew how to do it. He said he had got a little book that had been made by Mr Cobbett. I told him that I was the man, and should like to see some of his work; and asked him to bring it out to me, I being afraid to tie my horse. He told me that he was a cripple, and that he could not come out. At last I went in, leaving my horse to be held by a little girl. I found a young man, who has been a cripple for fourteen years. Some ladies in the neighbourhood had got him the book, and his family had got him the grass. He had made some very nice plat, and he had knitted the greater pan of the crown of a bonnet, and had done the whole very nicely, though, as to the knitting, he had proceeded in a way to make it very tedious. He was knitting upon a block. However, these little matters will soon be set to rights. There will soon be persons to teach knitting in all parts of the country. I left this unfortunate young man with the pleasing reflection, that I had, in all likelihood, been the cause of his gaining a good living, by his labour, during the rest of his life. How long will it be before my calumniators, the false and infamous London press, will, take the whole of it together, and leave out its evil, do as much good as my pen has done in this one instance! How long will it be ere the ruffians, the base hirelings, the infamous traders who own and who conduct that press; how long ere one of them, or all of them together, shall cause a cottage to smile; shall add one ounce to the meal of the labouring man!

  ROLVENDEN was my next village, and thence I could see the lofty church of TENTERDEN on the top of a hill at three miles distance. This ROLVENDEN is a very beautiful village; and, indeed, such are all the places along here. These villages are not like those in the iron counties, as I call them; that is, the counties of flint and chalk. Here the houses have gardens in front of them as well as behind; and there is a good deal of show and finery about them and their gardens. The high roads are without a stone in them; and every thing looks like gentility. At this place, I saw several arbutuses in one garden, and much finer than we see them in general; though, mind, this is no proof of a mild climate; for the arbutus is a native of one much colder than that of England, and indeed than that of Scotland.

  Coming from BENENDEN to ROLVENDEN I saw some Swedish turnips, and, strange as the reader will think it, the first I saw after leaving WORTH! The reason I take to be this: the farms are all furnished with grass-fields as in Devonshire about Honiton. These grass-fields give hay for the sheep and cattle in winter, or, at any rate, they do all that is not done by the white turnips. It may be a question, whether it would be more profitable to break up, and sow Swedes; but this is the reason of their not being cultivated along here. White turnips are more easily got than Swedes; they may be sown later; and, with good hay, they will fat cattle and sheep; but the Swedes will do this business without hay. In Norfolk and Suffolk the land is not generally of a nature to make hay-fields. Therefore the people there resort to Swedes. This has been a sad time for these hay-farmers, however, all along here. They have but just finished haymaking; and I see, all along my way, from East Grinstead to this place, hay-ricks the colour of dirt and smoaking like dung-heaps.