Rural Rides Read online

  I here began to see South Down sheep again, which I had not seen since the time I left TENTERDEN. All along here the villages are at not more than two miles distance from each other. They have all large churches, and scarcely any body to go to them. At a village called HADLOW, there is a house belonging to a Mr MAY, the most singular looking thing I ever saw. An immense house stuck all over with a parcel of chimnies, or things like chimnies; little brick columns, with a sort of caps on them, looking like carnation sticks, with caps at the top to catch the earwigs. The building is all of brick, and has the oddest appearance of any thing I ever saw. This TONBRIDGE is but a common country town, though very clean, and the people looking very well. The climate must be pretty warm here; for in entering the town, I saw a large Althea Frutex in bloom, a thing rare enough, any year, and particularly a year like this.

  Westerham, Saturday, Noon, 6th Sept.

  Instead of going on to the Wen along the turnpike road through SEVENOAKS, I turned to my left when I got about a mile out of TONBRIDGE, in order to come along that tract of country called the Weald of Kent; that is to say, the solid clays, which have no bottom, which are unmixed with chalk, sand, stone, or any thing else; the country of dirty roads and of oak trees. I stopped at TONBRIDGE only a few minutes; but in the Weald I stopped to breakfast at a place called Leigh. From Leigh I came to Chittingstone causeway, leaving TONBRIDGE WELLS six miles over the hills to my left. From CHITTINGSTONE I came to BOUGH-BEACH, thence to FOUR ELMS, and thence to this little market-town of WESTERHAM which is just upon the border of Kent. Indeed, Kent, Surrey and Sussex form a joining very near to this town. Westerham, exactly like REIGATE and GODSTONE, and SEVENOAKS, and DORKING, and FOLKESTONE, lies between the sand-ridge and the chalk-ridge. The valley is here a little wider than at Reigate, and that is all the difference there is between the places. As soon as you get over the sand hill to the south of Reigate, you get into the Weald of Surrey; and here, as soon as you get over the sand hill to the south of Westerham, you get into the weald of Kent.

  I have now, in order to get to the Wen, to cross the chalk-ridge once more, and, at a point where I never crossed it before. Coming through the Weald I found the corn very good; and, low as the ground is, wet as it is, cold as it is, there will be very little of the wheat which will not be housed before Saturday night. All the corn is good, and the barley excellent. Not far from BOUGH-BEACH, I saw two oak trees, one of which was, they told me, more than thirty feet round, and the other more than twenty-seven; but they have been hollow for half a century. They are not much bigger than the oak upon Tilford Green, if any. I mean in the trunk; but they are hollow, while that tree is sound in all its parts, and growing still. I have had a most beautiful ride through the Weald. The day is very hot; but I have been in the shade; and my horse’s feet very often in the rivulets and wet lanes. In one place I rode above a mile completely arched over by the boughs of the underwood, growing in the banks of the lane. What an odd taste that man must have who prefers a turnpike-road to a lane like this!

  Very near to Westerham there are hops; and I have seen now and then a little bit of hop garden, even in the Weald. Hops will grow well where lucerne will grow well; and lucerne will grow well where there is a rich top and a dry bottom. When therefore you see hops in the Weald, it is on the side of some hill, where there is sand or stone at bottom, and not where there is real clay beneath. There appear to be hops, here and there, all along from nearly at Dover to Alton, in Hampshire. You find them all along Kent; you find them at Westerham; across at Worth, in Sussex; at Godstone, in Surrey; over to the north of Merrow Down, near Guildford; at GODALMING; under the Hog’s-back, at Farnham; and all along that way to Alton. But there I think, they end. The whole face of the country seems to rise when you get just beyond ALTON, and to keep up. Whether you look to the north, the south, or west, the land seems to rise, and the hops cease, till you come again away to the north-west, in Herefordshire.

  Kensington, Saturday night 6 Sept.

  Here I close my day, at the end of forty-four miles. In coming up the chalk hill from Westerham, I prepared myself for the red stiff clay-like loam, the big yellow flints and the meadows; and I found them all. I have now gone over this chalk-ridge in the following places: at COOMBE in the North-West of Hampshire; I mean the North-West corner, the very extremity of the county. I have gone over it at ASHMANSWORTH, or HIGHCLERE, going from Newbury to Andover; at KINGSCLERE, going from NEWBURY to WINCHESTER; at ROPLEY, going from ALRESFORD to Selbourne; at DIPPINGHALL, going from Crondall to Thursly; at MERROW, going from CHERTSEY to CHILWORTH; at REIGATE; at WESTERHAM, and then, between these, at GODSTONE; at SEVENOAKS, going from London to BATTLE; at HOLLINGBOURNE, as mentioned above, and at FOLKESTONE. In all these places I have crossed this chalk-ridge. Every where, upon the top of it, I have found a flat, and the soil of all these flats I have found to be a red stiff loam mingled up with big yellow flints. A soil difficult to work; but by no means bad, whether for wood, hops, grass, orchards or corn. I once before mentioned that I was assured that the pasture upon these bleak hills was as rich as that which is found in the North of Wiltshire, in the neighbourhood of SWINDON, where they make some of the best cheese in the kingdom. Upon these hills I have never found the labouring people poor and miserable, as in the rich vales. All is not appropriated where there are coppices and wood, where the cultivation is not so easy and the produce so very large.

  After getting up the hill from Westerham, I had a general descent to perform all the way to the Thames. When you get to Beckenham, which is the last parish in Kent, the country begins to assume a cockney-like appearance; all is artificial, and you no longer feel any interest in it. I was anxious to make this journey into Kent, in the midst of harvest, in order that I might know the real state of the crops. The result of my observations and my inquiries, is, that the crop is a full average crop of every thing except barley, and that the barley yields a great deal more than an average crop. I thought that the beans were very poor during my ride into Hampshire; but I then saw no real bean countries. I have seen such countries now; and I do not think that the beans present us with a bad crop. As to the quality, it is, in no case (except perhaps the barley), equal to that of last year. We had, last year, an Italian summer. When the wheat, or other grain has to ripen in wet weather, it will not be bright, as it will when it has to ripen in fair weather. It will have a dingy or clouded appearance; and perhaps the flour may not be quite so good. The wheat, in fact, will not be so heavy. In order to enable others to judge, as well as myself, I took samples from the fields as I went along. I took them very fairly, and as often as I thought that there was any material change in the soil or other circumstances. During the ride I took sixteen samples. These are now at the Office of the Register, in Fleet-street, where they may be seen by any gentleman who thinks the information likely to be useful to him. The samples are numbered, and there is a reference pointing out the place where each sample was taken. The opinions that I gather amount to this; that there is an average crop of every thing, and a little more of barley.

  Now then we shall see how all this tallies with the schemes, with the intentions and expectations of our matchless gentlemen at Whitehall. These wise men have put forth their views in the ‘Courier’ of the 27th of August, and in words which ought never to be forgotten, and which, at any rate shall be recorded here.

  ‘GRAIN – During the present unsettled state of the weather, it is impossible for the best informed persons to anticipate upon good grounds what will be the future price of agricultural produce. Should the season even yet prove favourable, for the operations of the harvest, there is every probability of the average price of grain continuing at that exact price, which will prove most conducive to the interests of the com growers, and at the same time encouraging to the agriculture of our colonial possessions. We do not speak lightly on this subject, for we are aware that His Majesty’s Ministers have been fully alive to the inquiries from all qualified quarters as to the effect likely to
be produced on the markets from the addition of the present crops to the stock of wheat already on hand. The result of these inquiries is, that in the highest quarters there exists the full expectation, that towards the month of November, the price of wheat will nearly approach to seventy shillings, a price which, while it affords the extent of remuneration to the British farmer, recognized by the corn laws, will at the same time admit of the sale of the Canadian bonded wheat; and the introduction of this foreign corn, grown by British colonists, will contribute to keeping down our markets, and exclude foreign grain from other quarters.’

  There is nice gentlemen of Whitehall! What pretty gentlemen they are! ‘Envy of surrounding nations’, indeed, to be under command of pretty gentlemen who can make calculations so nice, and put forth predictions so positive upon such a subject! ‘Admiration of the world’ indeed, to live under the command of men who can so controul seasons and markets; or, at least, who can so dive into the secrets of trade, and find out the contents of the fields, barns, and ricks, as to be able to balance things so nicely as to cause the Canadian corn to find a market, without injuring the sale of that of the British farmer, and without admitting that of the French fanner and the other farmers of the continent! Happy, too happy, rogues that we are, to be under the guidance of such pretty gentlemen, and right just is it that we should be banished for life, if we utter a word tending to bring such pretty gentlemen into contempt.

  Let it be observed, that this paragraph must have come from Whitehall. This wretched paper is the demi-official organ of the Government. As to the owners of the paper, DANIEL STEWART, that notorious fellow, STREET, and the rest of them, not excluding the BROTHER OF THE GREAT ORACLE,4 which brother bought, the other day, a share of this vehicle of baseness and folly; as to these fellows, they have no control other than what relates to the expenditure and the receipts of the vehicle. They get their news from the offices of the Whitehall people, and their paper is the mouth-piece of those same people. Mark this, I pray you, reader; and let the French people mark it, too, and then take their revenge for the Waterloo insolence. This being the case, then; this paragraph proceeding from the pretty gentlemen, what a light it throws on their expectations, their hopes, and their fears. They see that wheat at seventy shillings a quarter is necessary to them! Ah! pray mark that! They see that wheat at seventy shillings a quarter is necessary to them; and, therefore, they say that wheat will be at seventy shillings a quarter, the price as they call it necessary to remunerate the British fanner. And how do the conjurors at Whitehall know this? Why, they have made full inquiries ‘IN QUALIFIED QUARTERS’. And the qualified quarters have satisfied the ‘HIGHEST QUARTERS’, that, ‘towards the month of November, the price of wheat will nearly approach to seventy shillings the quarter!’ I wonder what the words towards the ‘end of November’ may mean. Devil’s in’t if middle of September is not ‘towards November’; and the wheat, instead of going on towards seventy shillings, is very fast coming down to forty. The beast who wrote this paragraph; the pretty beast; this ‘envy of surrounding nations’ wrote it on the 27th of August a soaking wet Saturday! The pretty beast was not aware, that the next day was going to be fine, and that we were to have only the succeeding Tuesday and half the following Saturday of wet weather until the whole of the harvest should be in. The pretty beast wrote while the rain was spattering against the window; and he did ‘not speak lightly’, but was fully aware that the highest quarters, having made inquiries of the qualified quarters, were sure that wheat would be at seventy shillings during the ensuing year. What will be the price of wheat it is impossible for any one to say. I know a gentleman, who is a very good judge of such matters, who is of opinion that the average price of wheat will be thirty-two shillings a quarter, or lower, before Christmas; this is not quite half what the highest quarters expect, in consequence of the inquiries which they have made of the qualified quarters. I do not say, that the average of wheat will come down to thirty-two shillings; but this I know, that at Reading, last Saturday, about forty-five shillings was the price; and I hear, that, in Norfolk, the price is forty-two. The highest quarters, and the infamous London press, will, at any rate, be prettily exposed, before Christmas. Old SIR THOMAS LETHBRIDGE, too, and GAFFER GOOCH, and his base tribe of Pittites at Ipswich; COKE and SUFFIELD, and their crew; all these will be prettily laughed at; nor will that ‘tall soul’,5 LORD MILTON, escape being reminded of his profound and patriotic observation relative to ‘this self-renovating country’. No sooner did he see the wheat get up to sixty or seventy shillings than he lost all his alarms; found that all things were right, turned his back on Yorkshire Reformers, and went and toiled for SCARLETT at Peterborough; and discovered, that there was nothing wrong, at last, and that the ‘self-renovating country’ would triumph over all its difficulties! – So it will, ‘tall soul’; it will triumph over all its difficulties: it will renovate itself: it will purge itself of rotten boroughs, of vile borough-mongers, their tools and their stopgaps; it will purge itself of all the villanies which now corrode its heart; it will, in short, free itself from those curses, which the expenditure of eight or nine hundred millions of English money took place in order to make perpetual: it will, in short, become as free from oppression, as easy and as happy as the gallant and sensible nation on the other side of the Channel. This is the sort of renovation, but not renovation by the means of wheat at seventy shillings a quarter. Renovation it will have: it will rouse and will shake from itself curses like the pension which is paid to BURKE‘S executors. This is the sort of renovation, ‘tall soul’; and not wheat at 70s. a quarter while it is at twenty-five shillings a quarter in France. Pray observe, reader, how the ‘tall soul’ catched at the rise in the price of wheat: how he snapped at it: how quickly he ceased his attacks upon the Whitehall people and upon the System. He thought he had been deceived: he thought that things were coming about again; and so he drew in his horns, and began to talk about the self-renovating country. This was the tone of them all. This was the tone of all the borough-mongers; all the friends of the System; all those, who, like LETHBRIDGE, had begun to be staggered. They had deviated, for a moment, into our path; but they popped back again the moment they saw the price of wheat rise! All the enemies of Reform, all the calumniators of Reformers, all the friends of the System, most anxiously desired a rise in the price of wheat. Mark the curious fact, that all the vile press of London; the whole of that infamous press; that newspapers, magazines, reviews; the whole of the base thing, and a baser surely this world never saw; that the whole of this base thing rejoiced, exulted, crowed over me, and told an impudent lie, in order to have the crowing; crowed, for what? because wheat and bread were become dear! A newspaper hatched under a corrupt Priest, a profligate Priest, and recently espoused to the hell of Pall Mall,6 even this vile thing crowed because wheat and bread had become dear! Now, it is notorious, that, heretofore, every periodical publication in this kingdom was in the constant habit of lamenting, when bread became dear, and of rejoicing, when it became cheap. This is notorious. Nay, it is equally notorious, that this infamous press was everlastingly assailing bakers, and millers, and butchers, for not selling bread, flour, and meat cheaper than they were selling them. In how many hundreds of instances has this infamous press caused attacks to be made by the mob upon tradesmen of this description! All these things are notorious. Moreover, notorious it is that, long previous to every harvest, this infamous, this execrable, this beastly press, was engaged in stunning the public with accounts of the great crop which was just coming forward! There was always, with this press, a prodigiously large crop. This was invariably the case. It was never known to be the contrary.

  Now these things are perfectly well known to every man in England. How comes it, then, reader, that the profligate, the trading, the lying, the infamous press of London, has now totally changed its tone and bias. The base thing never now tells us that there is a great crop or even a good crop. It never now wants cheap bread and cheap wheat and cheap meat. It neve
r now finds fault of bakers and butchers. It now always endeavours to make it appear that corn is dearer than it is. The base ‘Morning Herald’, about three weeks ago, not only suppressed the fact of the fall of wheat, but asserted that there had been a rise in the price. Now why is all this? That is a great question, reader. That is a very interesting question. Why has this infamous press, which always pursues that which it thinks its own interest; why has it taken this strange turn? This is the reason: stupid as the base thing is, it has arrived at a conviction, that if the price of the produce of the land cannot be kept up to something approaching ten shillings a bushel for good wheat, the hellish system of funding must be blown up. The infamous press has arrived at a conviction, that that cheating, that fraudulent system by which this press lives, must be destroyed unless the price of corn can be kept up. The infamous traders of the press are perfectly well satisfied, that the interest of the Debt must be reduced, unless wheat can be kept up to nearly ten shillings a bushel. Stupid as they are, and stupid as the fellows down at Westminster are, they know very well, that the whole system, stock-jobbers, Jews, cant and all, go to the devil at once, as soon as a deduction is made from the interest of the Debt. Knowing this, they want wheat to sell high; because it has, at last, been hammered into their skulls, that the interest cannot be paid in full, if wheat sells low. Delightful is the dilemma in which they are. Dear bread does not suit their manufactories, and cheap bread does not suit their debt. ‘Envy of surrounding nations’, how hard it is that Providence will not enable your farmers to sell dear and the consumers to buy cheap! These are the things that you want. Admiration of the world you are; but have these things you will not. There may be those, indeed, who question whether you yourself know what you want; but, at any rate, if you want these things, you will not have them.