Rural Rides Page 50

  In coming to KEMPSFORD we got wet, and nearly to the skin. But, our friends gave us coats to put on, while ours were dried, and while we ate our breakfast. In our way to this house, where we now are, Mr TUCKY’S, at HEYDON, we called at Mr JAMES CROWDY’S, at HIGHWORTH, where I was from the 4th to the 9th of September inclusive; but, it looked rainy, and, therefore, we did not alight. We got wet again before we reached this place; but, our journey being short, we soon got our clothes dry again.

  Burghclere (Hampshire), Monday, 2nd October

  Yesterday was a really unfortunate day. The morning promised fair; but, its promises were like those of Burdett! There was a little snivelling, wet, treacherous frost. We had to come through SWINDON, and Mr TUCKY had the kindness to come with us, until we got three or four miles on this side (the Hungerford side) of that very neat and plain and solid and respectable market town. SWINDON is in Wiltshire, and is in the real fat of the land, all being wheat, beans, cheese, or fat meat. In our way to SWINDON, Mr TUCKY’S farm exhibited to me what I never saw before, four score oxen, all grazing upon one farm, and all nearly fat! They were some Devonshire and some Herefordshire. They were fatting on the grass only; and, I should suppose, that they are worth, or shortly will be, thirty pounds each. But, the great pleasure, with which the contemplation of this fine sight was naturally calculated to inspire me, was more than counterbalanced by the thought, that these fine oxen, this primest of human food, was, aye, every mouthful of it, destined to be devoured in the WEN, and that, too, for the far greater part, by the Jews, loan-jobbers, tax-eaters, and their base and prostituted followers, dependents, purveyors, parasites and pimps, literary as well as other wretches, who, if suffered to live at all ought to partake of nothing but the offal, and ought to come but one cut before the dogs and cats!

  Mind you, there is, in my opinion, no land in England that surpasses this. There is, I suppose, as good in the three last counties that I have come through; but, better than this is, I should think, impossible. There is a pasture-field, of about a hundred acres, close to SWINDON, belonging to a Mr GODDARD, which, with its cattle and sheep, was a most beautiful sight. But, every thing is full of riches; and, as fast as skill and care and industry can extract these riches from the land, the unseen grasp of taxation, loan-jobbing and monopolizing takes them away, leaving the labourers not half a belly-full, compelling the farmer to pinch them or to be ruined himself, and making even the landowner little better than a steward, or bailiff, for the tax-eaters, Jews and jobbers!

  Just before we got to SWINDON, we crossed a canal at a place where there is a wharf and a coal-yard, and close by these a gentleman’s house, with coach-house, stables, walled-in garden, paddock orné, and the rest of those things, which, all together, make up a villa, surpassing the second and approaching towards the first class. Seeing a man in the coal-yard, I asked him to what gentleman the house belonged: ‘to the head un o’ the canal,’ said he. And, when, upon further inquiry of him, I found that it was the villa of the chief manager, I could not help congratulating the proprietors of this aquatic concern; for, though I did not ask the name of the canal, I could readily suppose, that the profits must be prodigious, when the residence of the manager would imply no disparagement of dignity, if occupied by a Secretary of State for the Home, or even for the Foreign, department. I mean an English Secretary of State; for, as to an American one, his salary would be wholly inadequate to a residence in a mansion like this.

  From SWINDON we came up into the down-country; and these downs rise higher even than the Cotswold. We left Marlborough away to our right, and came along the turnpike road towards HUNGERFORD, but with a view of leaving that town to our left, further on, and going away, through RAMSBURY, towards the northernmost Hampshire hills, under which BURGHCLERE (where we now are) lies. We passed some fine farms upon these downs, the houses and homesteads of which were near the road. My companion, though he had been to London, and even to France, had never seen downs before; and it was amusing to me to witness his surprise at seeing the immense flocks of sheep, which were now (ten o’clock) just going out from their several folds to the downs for the day, each having its shepherd, and each shepherd his dog. We passed the homestead of a farmer WOODMAN, with sixteen banging wheat-ricks in the rick-yard, two of which were old ones; and rick-yard, farm-yard, waste-yard, horse-paddock, and all round about, seemed to be swarming with fowls, ducks, and turkeys, and on the whole of them not one feather but what was white.! Turning our eyes from this sight, we saw, just going out from the folds of this same farm, three separate and numerous flocks of sheep, one of which (the lamb-flock) we passed close by the side of. The shepherd told us, that this flock consisted of thirteen score and five; but, apparently, he could not, if it had been to save his soul, tell us how many hundreds he had: and, if you reflect a little, you will find, that this way of counting is much the easiest and best. This was a most beautiful flock of lambs; short legged, and, in every respect, what they ought to be. George, though born and bred amongst sheep-farms, had never before seen sheep with dark-coloured faces and legs; but his surprise, at this sight, was not nearly so great as the surprise of both of us, at seeing numerous and very large pieces (sometimes 50 acres together) of very good early turnips, Swedish as well as White! All the three counties of Worcester, Hereford and Gloucester (except on the Cotswold) do not, I am convinced, contain as great a weight of turnip bulbs, as we here saw in one single pieces; for here there are, for miles and miles, no hedges, and no fences of any sort.

  Doubtless they must have had rain here in the months of June and July; but, as I once before observed (though I forget when) a chalk bottom does not suffer the surface to burn, however shallow the top soil may be. It seems to me to absorb and to retain the water, and to keep it ready to be drawn up by the heat of the sun. At any rate the fact is, that the surface above it does not burn; for, there never yet was a summer, not even this last, when the downs did not retain their greenness to a certain degree, while the rich pastures, and even the meadows (except actually watered) were burnt so as to be as brown as the bare earth.

  This is a most pleasing circumstance attending the down-countries; and, there are no downs without a chalk bottom.

  Along here, the country is rather too bare: here, until you come to AUBURN, or ALDBOURNE, there are no meadows in the valleys, and no trees, even round the homesteads. This, therefore, is too naked to please me; but I love the downs so much, that, if I had to choose, I would live even here, and especially I would farm here, rather than on the banks of the WYE in Herefordshire, in the vale of Gloucester, or Worcester, or of Evesham, or, even in what the Kentish men call their ‘garden of Eden’. I have now seen (for I have, years back, seen the vales of Taunton, Glastonbury, Honiton, Dorchester and Sherburne) what are deemed the richest and most beautiful parts of England; and, if called upon to name the spot, which I deem the brightest and most beautiful and, of its extent, best of all, I should say, the villages of North Bovant and Bishopstrow, between Heytesbury and Warminster in Wiltshire; for there is, as appertaining to rural objects, every thing that I delight in. Smooth and verdant downs in hills and valleys of endless variety as to height and depth and shape; rich corn-land, unencumbered by fences; meadows in due proportion, and those watered at pleasure; and, lastly, the homesteads, and villages, sheltered in winter and shaded in summer by lofty and beautiful trees; to which may be added, roads never dirty and a stream never dry.

  When we came to AUBURN, we got amongst trees again. This is a town, and was, manifestly, once a large town. Its church is as big as three of that of Kensington. It has a market now, I believe; but, I suppose, it is, like many others, become merely nominal, the produce being nearly all carried to Hungerford, in order to be forwarded to the Jew-devils and the tax-eaters and monopolizers in the WEN, and in small WENS on the way. It is a decaying place; and, I dare say, that it would be nearly depopulated, in twenty years’ time, if this hellish jobbing system were to last so long.

  A little after
we came through AUBURN, we turned off to our right to go through RAMSBURY to SHALLBURN, where TULL, the father of the drill-husbandry, began and practised that husbandry at a farm called ‘PROSPEROUS’. Our object was to reach this place (Burghclere) to sleep, and to stay for a day or two; and, as I knew Mr BLANDY of Prosperous, I determined upon this route, which, besides, took us out of the turnpike-road. We stopped at RAMSBURY to bait our horses. It is a large, and, apparently, miserable village, or ‘town’ as the people call it. It was in remote times a Bishop’s See. Its church is very large and very ancient. Parts of it were evidently built long and long before the Norman Conquest. BURDETT owns a great many of the houses in the village (which contains nearly two thousand people), and will, if he live many years, own nearly the whole; for, as his eulogist, WILLIAM FRIEND, the Actuary, told the public, in a pamphlet, in 1817, he has resolved, that his numerous life-holds shall run out, and that those who were life-holders under his AUNT, from whom he got the estate, shall become rack-renters to him, or quit the occupations. Besides this, he is continually purchasing lands and houses round about and in this place. He has now let his house to a Mr ACRES; and, as the MORNING HERALD says, is safe landed at BORDEAUX, with his family, or the winter! When here, he did not occupy a square inch of his land! He let it all, park and all; and only reserved ‘a right of road’ from the highway to his door. ‘He had and has a right to do all this.’ A right? Who denies that? But, is this giving us a specimen of that ‘liberality and generosity and hospitality’ of those ‘English Country Gentlemen’, whose praises he so loudly sang last winter? His name is Francis Burdett Jones, which last name he was obliged to take by his AUNT’S will; and he actually used it for some time after the estate came to him! ‘JONES’ was too common a name for him, I suppose! Sounded too much of the vulgar!

  However, what I have principally to do with, is, his absence from the country at a time like this, and, if the newspapers be correct, his intended absence during the whole of next winter; and such a winter, too, as it is likely to be! He, for many years, complained, and justly, of the sinecure placemen; and, are we to suffer him to be, thus, a sinecure Member of parliament! This is, in my opinion, a great deal worse than a sinecure placeman; for this is shutting an active Member out. It is a dog-in-manger offence; and, to the people of a place such as Westminster, it is not only an injury, but a most outrageous insult. If it be true, that he intends to stay away, during the coming session of Parliament, I trust, not only, that he never will be elected again; but, that the people of Westminster will call upon him to resign; and this, I am sure they will do too. The next session of Parliament must be a most important one, and that he knows well. Every Member will be put to the test in the next session of Parliament. On the question of Corn-Bills every man must declare, for, or against, the people. He would declare against, if he dared; and, therefore, he gets out of the way! Or, this is what we shall have a clear right to presume, if he be absent from the next session of Parliament. He knows, that there must be something like a struggle between the land-owners and the fund-holders. His interest lies with the former; he wishes to support the law-church and the army and all sources of aristo-cratical profit; but, he knows, that the people of Westminster would be on the other side. It is better, therefore, to hear, at BORDEAUX, about this struggle, than to be engaged in it! He must know of the great embarrassment, distress, and of the great bodily suffering, now experienced by a large part of the people; and has he a right, after having got himself returned a member for such a place as Westminster, to go out of the country, at such a time and leave his seat vacant? He must know that, during the ensuing winter, there must be great distress in Westminster itself; for there will be a greater mass of the working people out of employ than there ever was in any winter before; and this calamity will, too, be owing to that infernal system, which he has been supporting, to those paper-money Rooks, with whom he is closely connected, and the existence of whose destructive rags he expressed his wish to prolong: he knows all this very well: he knows that, in every quarter the distress and danger are great; and is it not, then, his duty to be here? Is he, who, at his own request, has been intrusted with the representing of a great city to get out of the way at a time like this, and under circumstances like these? If this be so, then is this great, and once public-spirited city, become more contemptible, and infinitely more mischievous, than the ‘accursed hill’ of Wiltshire: but, this is not so: the people of Westminster are what they always were, full of good sense and public spirit: they have been cheated by a set of bribed intriguers; and how this has been done, I will explain to them, when I punish Sir Francis Burdett Jones for the sins, committed for him, by a hired Scotch writer. I shall dismiss him, for the present, with observing, that, if I had in me a millionth part of that malignity and vindictiveness, which he so basely showed towards me, I have learned anecdotes sufficient to enable me to take AMPLE VENGEANCE on him for the stabs which he, in 1817, knew that he was sending to the hearts of the defenceless part of my family!

  While our horses were baiting at RAMSBURY, it began to rain, and by the time that they had done, it rained pretty hard, with every appearance of continuing to rain for the day; and it was now about eleven o’clock, we having 18 or 19 miles to go before we got to the intended end of our journey. Having, however, for several reasons, a very great desire to get to Burghclere, that night, we set off in the rain; and, as we carry no great coats, we were wet to the skin pretty soon. Immediately upon quitting RAMSBURY, we crossed the River KENNET, and, mounting a highish hill, we looked back over friend SIR GLORY’S park, the sight of which brought into my mind the visit of THIMBLE and COWHIDE, as described in the ‘intense comedy’, and, when I thought of the ‘taker’s being starved to death’, and of the ‘heavy fall of snow’, I could not help bursting out a laughing3 though it poured of rain and though I already felt the water on my skin. – MEM. TO ask, when I get to London, what is become of the intense ‘Counsellor Bric’; and whether he have yet had the justice to put the K to the end of his name. I saw a lovely female SHOY-HOY, engaged in keeping the rooks from a newly-sown wheat field on the Cotswold Hills, that would be a very suitable match for him; and, as his manners appear to be mended; as he now praises to the skies those 40s. freeholders, whom, in my hearing, he asserted to be ‘beneath brute beasts’; as he does, in short, appear to be rather less offensive than he was, I should have no objection to promote the union; and, I am sure, the farmer would like it of all things; for, if Miss Stuffed o’straw can, when single, keep the devourers at a distance, say, you who know him, whether the sight of the husband’s head would leave a rook in the country!

  Turning from viewing the scene of THIMBLE and COWHIDE’S cruel disappointment, we pushed through coppices and across fields, to a little village, called FROXFIELD, which we found to be on the great BATH-ROAD. Here, crossing the road and also a run of water, we, under the guidance of a man, who was good enough to go about a mile with us, and to whom we gave a shilling and the price of a pot of beer, mounted another hill, from which, after twisting about for awhile, I saw, and recognized the out-buildings of PROSPEROUS FARM, towards which we pushed on as fast as we could, in order to keep ourselves in motion so as to prevent our catching cold; for it rained, and incessantly, every step of the way. I had been at Prosperous before; so that I knew Mr BLANDY, the owner, and his family, who received us with great hospitality. They took care of our horses, gave us what we wanted in the eating and drinking way, and clothed us, shirts and all, while they dried all our clothes; for, not only the things on our bodies were soaked, but those also which we carried in little thin leather rolls, fastened on upon the saddles before us. Notwithstanding all that could be done in the way of dispatch, it took more than three hours to get our clothes dry. At last, about three quarters of an hour before sun-set, we got on our clothes again and set off: for, as an instance of real bad luck, it ceased to rain the moment we got to Mr BLANDY’S. Including the numerous angles and windings, we had nine or ten miles yet
to go; but, I was so anxious to get to BURGHCLERE, that, contrary to my practice as well as my principle, I determined to encounter the darkness for once, though in cross-country roads, presenting us at every mile, with ways crossing each other; or forming a Υ; or kindly giving us the choice of three, forming the upper part of a Υ and a half. Add to this, that we were in an enclosed country, the lanes very narrow, deep-worn, and banks and hedges high. There was no moon; but, it was star-light, and, as I could see the Hampshire Hills all along to my right, and knew that I must not get above a mile or so from them, I had a guide that could not deceive me; for, as to asking the road, in a case like this, it is of little use, unless you meet some one at every half mile; for the answer is, keep right on; aye, but in ten minutes, perhaps, you come to a Υ, or to a Τ, or to a +. A fellow told me once, in my way from Chertsey to Guilford, ‘keep right on, you can’t miss your way’. I was in the perpendicular part of the Τ, and the top part was only a few yards from me. ‘Right on,’ said I, ‘what over that bank into the wheat?’ ‘No no,’ said he, ‘I mean that road, to be sure’, pointing to the road that went off to the left. In down-countries, the direction of shepherds and pig and bird boys is always in precisely the same words; namely, ‘right hover the down’, laying great stress upon the word right. ‘But,’ said I, to a boy, at the edge of the down at KING’S WORTHY (near Winchester), who gave me this direction to STOKE CHARITY; ‘but, what do you mean by right over the down?’ ‘Why,’ said he, ‘right on to Stoke, to be sure, Zur.’ ‘Aye,’ said I, ‘but how am I, who was never here before, to know what is right, my boy?’ That posed him. It set him to thinking: and, after a bit he proceeded to tell me, that, when I got up the hill, I should see some trees; that I should go along by them; that I should then see a barn right before me; that I should go down to that barn; and that I should then see a wagon track that would lead me all down to Stoke. ‘Aye!’ said I, ‘now indeed you are a real clever fellow.’ And I gave him a shilling, being part of my savings of the morning. Whoever tries it will find, that the less they eat and drink, when travelling, the better they will be. I act accordingly. Many days I have no breakfast and no dinner. I went from Devizes to Highworth without breaking my fast, a distance, including my deviations, of more than thirty miles. I sometimes take, from a friend’s house, a little bit of meat between two bits of bread, which I eat as I ride along; but, whatever I save from this fasting work, I think I have a clear right to give away; and, accordingly, I generally put the amount, in copper, into my waistcoat pocket, and dispose of it during the day. I know well, that lam the better for not stuffing and blowing myself out, and with the savings I make many and many a happy boy; and, now-and-then, I give a whole family a good meal with the cost of a breakfast, or a dinner, that would have done me mischief. I do not do this, because I grudge innkeepers what they charge; for, my surprise is, how they can live without charging more than they do in general.