My adventures increase and have a strange similitude. Passing through Millbrook, near Lord Ossory’s, some cottages, with corn in their gardens, on the slopes of a narrow sandy vale, caught my eye, but speedily passing it was a second thought to stop the horse and walk down to them. There are thirteen of them, and all inhabited by owners. A hemp weaver, who lives in the first I entered, gave me an account of them all, and amongst the rest he named Underwood’s, who had a large family, and was sadly poor. I went to it. Poor indeed! the cottage almost tumbling down, the wind blowing through it on every side. On a bed, which was hardly good enough for a hog, was the woman very ill and moaning; she had been lately brought to bed, and her infant was dead in a cradle by the bedside. What a spectacle! She had four children living; one, a little girl, was at home, and putting together a few embers on the hearth. My heart sank within me at the sight of so much misery, and so dark, cold, tattered and wretched a room. Merciful God, to take the little child to Himself, rather than leave it existing in such a place. What a sight! I entered another cottage, which was lately built, neat and cheerful, the Widow Scarboro’s; she earns something by washing, but her smoky chimney most uncomfortable. No wonder, with the old broad high fire-place. In the depth of winter the door must be open. I told her how to cure it, but I wished to give her a Rumford grate and see it fixed. Impossible! and her evils are nothing to poor Underwood’s.
But how strange yesterday to find a dead woman in a house, and to-day a dead child, and in such an accidental manner, as it seems, to enter just these houses. No chance; the more I see, the more I reflect, the more I am convinced that the providence of the Almighty directs everything, but in a manner utterly incomprehensible to us; and it is the more incomprehensible from our paying so very little attention to it. If every one was to be careful to observe all such apparently accidental events, they would have reason to acknowledge the hand of Omnipotence. In three days how has what the world calls chance conducted my steps!
These poor people know not by what tenure they hold their land; they say they once belonged to the duke, but that the duke has swopped them away to my lord (Lord Ossory). How little do the great know what they swop and what they receive! What would be a blessing poured into their hands if they knew how to use it. What a field is here! How very trifling the repairs to render these poor families warm and comfortable! Above their gardens on one side there is a waste fern tract now enclosed, from which small additions might be given them, yet would enable them to live from their ground at least much better than at present. What have not great and rich people to answer, for not examining into the situation of their poor neighbours?
To Woburn Abbey. Here is wealth and grandeur and worldly greatness; but I am sick of it as soon as I enter these splendid walls. I had rather be amongst the cottagers at Millbrook had I but the means of aiding them. I will see Lord Ossory, and try to do something for them.
In these farming tours[[195]] of mine, vain ideas will too often rise in my mind on the importance of my labour to the public good; and were the improvement of agriculture alone to be considered, I believe little doubt could be entertained. But what is the tendency of all these improvements except to add to the wealth and prosperity of a country that is already under a most heavy responsibility to the Almighty for innumerable temporal blessings; repaid with the black ingratitude of irreligion, and a general contempt of everything serious or sacred. Carriers’ waggons and stage coaches are passing here every hour in open defiance of the laws of God and man; and the Sabbath is the sure day of labour for all travelling gentlemen. What horses are they that rest, that can by any means be made to work? Our fields are made to smile with cultivation for the profits of men thankless to Heaven. Can such a country continue to be thus blessed? I fear and dread some terrible reverse, and have the only hope that the prayers of religious men, Methodists as they are called, may be heard, and avert the misfortunes we deserve. It damps all vanity of public good attending such attempts as mine, to think of the use that is made of great wealth. Affliction and poverty may do something in bringing nations, like individuals, to their senses; but to increase the wealth that adds to our irreligion and ingratitude, is of a very poor importance indeed, and too questionable to permit one vain thought to be fairly founded.
July 7.—Breakfasting at Huntingdon from Kimbolton, after spending just a week with the duke and duchess. It has been so pleasant and agreeable that I am unhinged on quitting them. The duchess pleases me as much or more than any woman I have met these many years. Her character in every worldly respect is most amiable. There is a native ease, simplicity, and naïveté of character in her which delights me; and when I consider the life of the Duchess of Gordon, her mother, the great patroness of every dissipation, I am amazed at this secluded young duchess, who never goes to London, loves a retired life, and is quite contented on a fortune very moderate for the rank of her husband. She gave me her whole history, from going one summer for some weeks to drink goat’s whey on the mountains many miles beyond Gordon Castle, and running up and down the hills bare-footed, driving down the goats and milking them; and being delighted with the place and the life, though no human being within many miles except the family and an old woman of the solitary house. This was the case of all the girls; she never went to school, and laid in a fine stock of health, and with it a sweetness of temper and simplicity of character which, joined with an excellent understanding, contributed so much to form her as she is at present, calculated to be a blessing to her husband. She loves him, and behaves with a most exemplary and unexampled patience and mildness under his connection with Mrs. ——. I like her greatly,[[196]] and wish I could add that she was religious. She goes to church often, she says, and brings her four lovely children up to attend it; but I see she has no sense or feeling of real religion, which I spoke of repeatedly, and earnestly recommended. The next time they come to Culford they both promised to come and see me, and will do it I have no doubt. The spectacle in this age of seeing a very plain table, a plain unaffected way of living, and everything about them modest and moderate in scale, very little company, and never at London, yet all cheerfulness and content, even under the above circumstance, speaks a good heart and an amiable temper, as much as such can be good with the Almighty coming in for so poor a share of its attentions. I do and will pray to God that He will give her His grace to change in this respect, and then she will be a pattern for her sex.
July 7.—To Huntingdon, St. Ives, and Holywell, at the Reverend Mr. Hutchinson’s, who was long at Kimbolton, and had livings given to him by the late duke; [has] four stout, well-looking, unmarried daughters, that have been marriageable some years. A common spectacle, and everywhere from the same cause: the fornication of men with the abandoned of the sex robs thousands of such virtuous and good girls of husbands. The more I reflect, the more I see the reason of God’s wrath and denunciations against this vice in Scripture, however natural it is, and however powerful the temptation. The more the temptation the more the wickedness to throw so many into it, by depriving those of husbands to whom God has given the right, but of which the vice of man deprives them. Every man would have his wife, and every woman her husband, were it not for whores and whoremongers. Christianity is in everything consistent with reason, morals, and the religion of nature.
At St. Ives [met] a drunken beast, a doctor of divinity, is intoxicated every day; drunk about the streets; introduced himself to me, and breathed like a puncheon of rum in my face.
Sunday, 20th: Downham.—I have had a busy week and gained a great variety of good intelligence; but what is it all but vanity and vexation of spirit if examined with view of a superior nature! However, it is my undoubted duty to do my best, and I must approve upon the whole of exerting as much industry for the Board as ever I did upon my own account. My employment is not only lawful, but useful; God grant me to render it as much so to the poor as circumstances will permit. In this week I have been at Wing’s at Thorney Abbey. A party of ladies [here], Mrs. Ansel of Ormsby in Lincolnshire and two daughters. They attacked me, but with politeness, on my rabbit article in the Lincoln report. I found from their conversation on Wilberforce and H. More that they are good Christians, so they might say anything; but we parted very good friends. At March: Reverend Mr. Jobson and a vulgar steward, a prating but a useful fellow, Wandby, dined with me.
At Downham: Lemon, Dashwood, and a poor fen man Talbot. I have gone on well for the object of my journey; would that I went on as well in the great journey to the next world! At church twice; Mr. Dashwood in his sermon spoke very properly on a topic which I have often thought should be inveighed upon vigorously: the great indecency of people sitting when they should kneel, which is now everywhere so common; but in the afternoon a better congregation and no sermon! For a clergyman to have an audience collected ready to hear him and yet quit the church without preaching, how very lukewarm he must be in care of souls who can bring himself without violence to such a conduct! Is this the way with Methodists as they are called? God forbid! With a church thus filled as that of England is, who can wonder at Sectaries increasing? All is poor work when men are not in earnest—when they are not as animated and eager in their sacred calling as others are in their business and shops. A parson should always think: what would St. Paul do on this occasion?