Rural Rides Read online

  Canterbury, Thursday Afternoon, 4th Sept.

  In quitting Sandwich, you immediately cross a river up which vessels bring coals from the sea. This marsh is about a couple of miles wide. It begins at the sea-beach, opposite the Downs, to my right hand, coming from Sandwich, and it wheels round to my left and ends at the sea-beach, opposite Margate roads. This marsh was formerly covered with the sea, very likely; and hence the land within this sort of semicircle, the name of which is Thanet, was called an Isle. It is, in fact, an island now, for the same reason that Portsea is an island, and that New York is an island; for there certainly is the water in this river that goes round and connects one part of the sea with the other. I had to cross this river, and to cross the marsh, before I got into the famous Isle of Thanet, which it was my intention to cross. Soon after crossing the river, I passed by a place for making salt, and could not help recollecting that there are no excisemen in these salt-making places in France, that, before the Revolution, the French were most cruelly oppressed by the duties on salt, that they had to endure, on that account, the most horrid tyranny that ever was known, except, perhaps, that practised in an Exchequer that shall here be nameless; that thousands and thousands of men and women were every year sent to the galleys for what was called smuggling salt; that the fathers and even the mothers were imprisoned or whipped if the children were detected in smuggling salt: I could not help reflecting, with delight, as I looked at these salt-pans in the Isle of Thanet; I could not help reflecting, that in spite of PITT, DUNDAS, PERCEVAL, and the rest of the crew, in spite of the caverns of Dover and the Martello Towers in Romney Marsh: in spite of all the spies and all the bayonets, and the six hundred millions of Debt, and the hundred and fifty millions of dead-weight, and the two hundred millions of poor-rates that are now squeezing the borough-mongers, squeezing the farmers, puzzling the fellows at Whitehall and making Mark-lane a scene of greater interest than the Chamber of the Privy Council; with delight as I jogged along under the first beams of the sun, I reflected, that, in spite of all the malignant measures that had brought so much misery upon England, the gallant French people had ridded themselves of the tyranny which sent them to the galleys for endeavouring to use without tax the salt which God sent upon their shores. Can any man tell why we should still be paying five, or six, or seven shillings a bushel for salt, instead of one? We did pay fifteen shillings a bushel, tax. And why is two shillings a bushel kept on? Because, if they were taken off, the salt tax-gathering crew must be discharged! This tax of two shillings a bushel, causes the consumer to pay five, at the least, more than he would if there were no tax at all! When, great God! when shall we be allowed to enjoy God’s gifts, in freedom, as the people of France enjoy them?—On the marsh I found the same sort of sheep as on Romney Marsh; but the cattle here are chiefly Welsh; black, and called runts. They are nice hardy cattle; and, I am told, that this is the description of cattle that they fat all the way up on this north side of Kent.—When I got upon the corn land in the Isle of Thanet, I got into a garden indeed. There is hardly any fallow; comparatively few turnips. It is a country of corn. Most of the harvest is in; but there are some fields of wheat and of barley not yet housed. A great many pieces of lucerne, and all of them very fine. I left Ramsgate to my right about three miles, and went right across the island to Margate; but that place is so thickly settled with stock-jobbing cuckolds, at this time of the year, that, having no fancy to get their horns stuck into me, I turned away to my left when I got within about half a mile of the town. I got to a little hamlet, where I breakfasted; but could get no corn for my horse, and no bacon for myself! All was corn around me. Barns, I should think, two hundred feet long; ricks of enormous size and most numerous; crops of wheat, five quarters to an acre, on the average; and a public-house without either bacon or corn! The labourers’ houses, all along through this island, beggarly in the extreme. The people dirty, poor-looking; ragged, but particularly dirty. The men and boys with dirty faces, and dirty smock-frocks, and dirty shirts; and, good God! what a difference between the wife of a labouring man here, and the wife of a labouring man in the forests and woodlands of Hampshire and Sussex! Invariably have I observed, that the richer the soil, and the more destitute of woods; that is to say, the more purely a corn country, the more miserable the labourers. The cause is this, the great, the big bull frog grasps all. In this beautiful island every inch of land is appropriated by the rich. No hedges, no ditches, no commons, no grassy lanes: a country divided into great farms; a few trees surround the great farm-house. All the rest is bare of trees; and the wretched labourer has not a stick of wood, and has no place for a pig or cow to graze, or even to lie down upon. The rabbit countries are the countries for labouring men. There the ground is not so valuable. There it is not so easily appropriated by the few. Here, in this island, the work is almost all done by the horses. The horses plough the ground; they sow the ground; they hoe the ground; they carry the corn home; they thresh it out; and they carry it to market: nay, in this island, they rake the ground; they rake up the straggling straws and ears; so that they do the whole, except the reaping and the mowing. It is impossible to have an idea of any thing more miserable than the state of the labourers in this part of the country.

  After coming by Margate, I passed a village called MONCKTON, and another called SARR. At SARR there is a bridge, over which you come out of the island, as you go into it over the bridge at SANDWICH. At MONCKTON they had seventeen men working on the roads, though the harvest was not quite in, and though, of course, it had all to be threshed out; but, at MONCKTON, they had four threshing machines; and they have three threshing machines at SARR, though there, also, they have several men upon the roads!2 This is a shocking state of things; and, in spite of every thing that the Jenkinsons and the Scots can do, this state of things must be changed.

  At SARR, or a little way further back, I saw a man who had just begun to reap a field of canary seed. The plants were too far advanced to be cut in order to be bleached for the making of plat; but I got the reaper to select me a few green stalks that grew near a bush that stood on the outside of the piece. These I have brought on with me, in order to give them a trial. At SARR I began to cross the marsh, and had, after this, to come through the village of UP-STREET, and another village called STEADY, before I got to Canterbury. At UP-STREET I was struck with the words written upon a board which was fastened upon a pole, which pole was standing in a garden near a neat little box of a house. The words were these: ‘PARADISE PLACE. Spring guns and steel traps are set here.’ A pretty idea it must give us of Paradise to know that spring guns and steel traps are set in it! This is doubtless some stockjobber’s place; for, in the first place, the name is likely to have been selected by one of that crew; and, in the next place, whenever any of them go to the country, they look upon it that they are to begin a sort of warfare against every thing around them. They invariably look upon every labourer as a thief.

  As you approach Canterbury, from the Isle of Thanet, you have another instance of the squanderings of the lawyer Ministers. Nothing equals the ditches, the caverns, the holes, the tanks and hiding-places of the hill at Dover; but, considerable as the City of Canterbury is, that city, within its gates, stands upon less ground than those horrible erections, the barracks of PITT, DUNDAS, and PERCEVAL. They are perfectly enormous; but thanks be unto God, they begin to crumble down. They have a sickly hue: all is lassitude about them: endless are their lawns, their gravel walks, and their ornaments; but their lawns are unshaven, their gravel walks grassy, and their ornaments putting on the garments of ugliness. You see the grass growing opposite the door-ways. A hole in the window strikes you here and there. Lamp-posts there are, but no lamps. Here are horse-barracks, foot-barracks, artillery-barracks, engineer-barracks: a whole country of barracks; but, only here and there a soldier. The thing is actually perishing. It is typical of the state of the great thing of things. It gave me inexpressible pleasure to perceive the gloom that seemed to hang over these barracks,
which once swarmed with soldiers and their blithe companions, as a hive swarms with bees. These barracks now look like the environs of a hive in winter. Westminster Abbey Church is not the place for the monument of PITT, the statue of the great snorting bawler ought to be stuck up here, just in the midst of this hundred or two of acres covered with barracks. These barracks, too, were erected in order to compel the French to return to the payment of tithes; in order to bring their necks again under the yoke of the lords and the clergy. That has not been accomplished. The French, as Mr HOGGART assures us, have neither tithes, taxes, nor rates; and the people of Canterbury know that they have a hop-duty to pay, while Mr HOGGART, of Broad-street, tells them that he has farms to let, in France, where there are hop-gardens and where there is no hop-duty. They have lately had races at Canterbury; and the Mayor and Aldermen, in order to get the Prince Leopold to attend them, presented him with the Freedom of the City; but it rained all the time and he did not come! The Mayor and Aldermen do not understand things half so well as this German Gentleman, who has managed his matters as well, I think, as any one that I ever heard of.

  This fine old town, or, rather, city, is remarkable for cleanliness and niceness, notwithstanding it has a Cathedral in it. The country round it is very rich, and this year, while the hops are so bad in most other parts, they are not so very bad, just about Canterbury.

  Elverton Farm, near Faversham, Friday Morning, Sept. 5

  In going through Canterbury, yesterday, I gave a boy sixpence to hold my horse, while I went into the Cathedral, just to thank St Swithin for the trick that he had played my friends, the Quakers. Led along by the wet weather till after the harvest had actually begun, and then to find the weather turn fine, all of a sudden! This must have soused them pretty decently; and I hear of one who, at Canterbury, has made a bargain by which he will certainly lose two thousand pounds. The land where I am now is equal to that of the Isle of Thanet. The harvest is nearly over, and all the crops have been prodigiously fine. In coming from Canterbury, you come to the top of a hill, called Baughton Hill, at four miles from Canterbury on the London road; and you there look down into one of the finest flats in England. A piece of marsh comes up nearly to FAVERSHAM; and, at the edge of that marsh lies the farm where I now am. The land here is a deep loam upon chalk; and this is also the nature of the land in the Isle of Thanet and all the way from that to Dover. The orchards grow well upon this soil. The trees grow finely, the fruit is large and of fine flavour.

  In 1821 I gave Mr Wm. Waller, who lives here, some American apple-cuttings; and he has now some as fine Newtown Pippins as one would wish to see. They are very large of their sort; very free in their growth; and they promise to be very fine apples of the kind. Mr Waller had cuttings from me of several sorts, in 1822. These were cut down last year; they have, of course, made shoots this summer; and great numbers of these shoots have fruit-spurs, which will have blossom, if not fruit, next year. This very rarely happens, I believe; and the state of Mr WALLER’s trees clearly proves to me that the introduction of these American trees would be a great improvement.

  My American apples, when I left Kensington, promised to be very fine; and the apples, which I have frequently mentioned as being upon cuttings imported last Spring,3 promised to come to perfection; a thing which, I believe, we have not an instance of before.

  Merryworth, Friday Evening, 5th Sept.

  A friend at TENTERDEN told me that, if I had a mind to know Kent, I must go through Romney Marsh to DOVER, from DOVER to SANDWICH, from Sandwich to Margate, from Margate to Canterbury, from Canterbury to Faversham, from Faversham to Maidstone, and from Maidstone to Tonbridge. I found from Mr WALLER, this morning, that the regular turnpike route, from his house to Maidstone, was through SITTINGBOURNE. I had been along that road several times; and besides, to be covered with dust was what I could not think of, when I had it in my power to get to Maidstone without it. I took the road across the country, quitting the London road, or rather, crossing it, in the dell, between OSPRINGE and GREEN-STREET. I instantly began to go up hill, slowly, indeed; but up hill. I came through the villages of NEWNHAM, DODDINGTON, RINGLESTONE, and to that of HOLLINGBOURNE. I had come up hill for thirteen miles, from Mr WALLER’S house. At last, I got to the top of this hill, and went along, for some distance, upon level ground. I found I was got upon just the same sort of land as that on the hill at Folkestone, at Reigate, at Ropley and at Ashmansworth. The red clayey loam, mixed up with great yellow dint stones. I found fine meadows here, just such as are at Ashmansworth (that is to say, on the north Hampshire hills). This sort of ground is characterized by an astonishing depth that they have to go for the water. At Ashmansworth, they go to a depth of more than three hundred feet. As I was riding along upon the top of this hill in Kent, I saw the same beautiful sort of meadows that there are at Ashmansworth; I saw the corn backward; I was just thinking to go up to some house, to ask how far they had to go for water, when I saw a large well-bucket, and all the chains and wheels belonging to such a concern; but here was also the tackle for a horse to work in drawing up the water! I asked about the depth of the well; and the information I received must have been incorrect; because I was told it was three hundred yards. I asked this of a public-house keeper further on, not seeing any body where the farm-house was. I make no doubt that the depth is, as near as possible, that of Ashmansworth. Upon the top of this hill, I saw the finest field of beans that I have seen this year, and, by very far, indeed, the finest piece of hops. A beautiful piece of hops, surrounded by beautiful plantations of young ash, producing poles for hop-gardens. My road here pointed towards the West. It soon wheeled round towards the South; and, all of a sudden, I found myself upon the edge of a hill, as lofty and as steep as that at FOLKESTONE, at Reigate, or at ASHMANSWORTH. It was the same famous chalk-ridge that I was crossing again. When I got to the edge of the hill, and before I got off my horse to lead him down this more than mile of hill, I sat and surveyed the prospect before me, and to the right and to the left. This is what the people of Kent call the Garden of Eden. It is a district of meadows, corn fields, hop-gardens, and orchards of apples, pears, cherries and filberts, with very little if any land which cannot, with propriety, be called good. There are plantations of Chesnut and of Ash frequently occurring; and as these are cut when long enough to make poles for hops, they are at all times objects of great beauty.

  At the foot of the hill of which I have been speaking, is the village of HOLLINGBOURNE; thence you come on to Maidstone. From MAID-STONE to this place (MERRYWORTH) is about seven miles, and these are the finest seven miles that I have ever seen in England or any where else. The Medway is to your left, with its meadows about a mile wide. You cross the Medway, in coming out of Maidstone, and it goes and finds its way down to Rochester, through a break in the chalk-ridge. From Maidstone to Merryworth, I should think that there were hop-gardens on one half of the way on both sides of the road. Then looking across the Medway you see hop-gardens and orchards two miles deep, on the side of a gently rising ground: and this continues with you all the way from Maidstone to Merryworth. The orchards form a great feature of the country; and the plantations of Ashes and of Chesnuts that I mentioned before, add greatly to the beauty. These gardens of hops are kept very clean, in general, though some of them have been neglected this year owing to the bad appearance of the crop. The culture is sometimes mixed: that is to say, apple-trees or cherry-trees or filbert-trees and hops, in the same ground. This is a good way, they say, of raising an orchard. I do not believe it; and I think that nothing is gained by any of these mixtures. They plant apple-trees or cherry-trees in rows here; they then plant a filbert-tree close to each of these large fruit-trees; and then they cultivate the middle of the ground by planting potatoes. This is being too greedy. It is impossible that they can gain by this. What they gain one way they lose the other way; and I verily believe, that the most profitable way would be, never to mix things at all. In coming from Maidstone I passed through a village called TESTON, wher
e LORD BASHAM has a seat.

  Tonbridge, Saturday, morning 6th Sept.

  I came off from MERRYWORTH a little before five o‘clock, passed the seat of LORD TORRINGTON, the friend of Mr BARRETTO. This Mr Barretto ought not to be forgotten so soon. In 1820 he sued for articles of the peace against LORD TORRINGTON, for having menaced him, in consequence of his having pressed his Lordship about some money. It seems that LORD TORRINGTON had known him in the East Indies; that they came home together, or soon after one another; that his Lordship invited Mr BARRETTO to his best parties in India; that he got him introduced at Court in England by Sidmouth; that he got him made a fellow of the Royal Society; and that he tried to get him introduced into Parliament. His Lordship, when BARRETTO rudely pressed him for his money, reminded him of all this, and of the many difficulties that he had had to overcome with regard to his colour and so forth. Nevertheless, the dingy skinned Court visitant pressed in such a way that LORD TORRINGTON was obliged to be pretty smart with him, whereupon the other sued for articles of the peace against his Lordship; but these were not granted by the Court. This Barretto issued a hand-bill at the last election as a candidate for St Albans. I am truly sorry that he was not elected. Lord Camelford threatened to put in his black fellow; but he was a sad swaggering fellow; and had, at last, too much of the borough-monger in him to do a thing so meritorious. LORD TORRING-TON’S is but an indifferent looking place.