The morning rose; the supper reck’ning paid,
And our due fees discharg’d to man and maid,
The ready ostler near the stirrup stands,
And as we mount, our halfpence load his hands.
Now the steep hill fair Dorchester o’erlooks,
Bordered by meads, and wash’d by silver brooks.
Here sleep my two companions, eyes supprest,
And propt in elbow-chairs they snoring rest;
I weary sit, and with my pencil trace
Their painful postures and their eyeless face;
Then dedicate each glass to some fair name,
And on the sash the diamond scrawls my flame.
Now o’er true Roman way our horses sound;
Grævius would kneel and kiss the sacred ground.
On either side fair fertile valleys lie,
The distant prospects tire the travelling eye.
Through Bridport’s stony lanes our route we take,
And the proud steep ascend to Morecombe’s lake.
As hearses pass’d, our landlord robb’d the pall,
And with the mournful scutcheon hung his hall.
On unadulterate wine we here regale,
And strip the lobster of his scarlet mail.
We climb’d the hills when starry night arose,
And Axminster affords a kind repose.
The maid, subdued by fees, her trunk unlocks,
And gives the cleanly aid of dowlas smocks.
Meantime our shirts her busy fingers rub,
While the soap lathers o’er the foaming tub.
If women’s gear such pleasing dreams incite,
Lend us your smocks, ye damsels, ev’ry night.
We rise, our beards demand the barber’s art;
A female enters, and performs the part.
The weighty golden chain adorns her neck,
And three gold rings her skilful hand bedeck;
Smooth o’er our chins her easy fingers move,
Soft as when Venus strok’d the beard of Jove.
Now from the steep, ’mid scatter’d cots and groves,
Our eye through Honiton’s fair valley roves.
Behind us soon the busy town we leave,
Where finest lace industrious lasses weave.
Now swelling clouds roll’d on; the rainy load
Stream’d down our hats, and smoked along the road;
When (O blest sight!) a friendly sign we spy’d,
Our spurs are slacken’d from the horse’s side;
For sure a civil host the house commands,
Upon whose sign this courteous motto stands—
“This is the ancient hand, and eke the pen;
Here is for horses hay, and meat for men.”
How rhyme would flourish, did each son of fame
Know his own genius, and direct his flame!
Then he that could not Epic flights rehearse
Might sweetly mourn in Elegiac verse.
But were his Muse for Elegy unfit,
Perhaps a Distich might not strain his wit;
If Epigram offend, his harmless lines
Might in gold letters swing on alehouse signs.
Then Hobbinol might propagate his bays,
And Tuttle-fields record his simple lays;
Where rhymes like these might lure the nurses’ eyes,
While gaping infants squall for farthing pies.
“Treat here, ye shepherds blithe, your damsels sweet,
For pies and cheesecakes are for damsels meet.”
Then Maurus in his proper sphere might shine,
And these proud numbers grace great William’s sign;—
“This is the man, this the Nassovian, whom
I named the brave deliverer to come.”
But now the driving gales suspend the rain,
We mount our steeds, and Devon’s city gain.
Hail, happy native land!—but I forbear
What other counties must with envy hear.
Dean Swift, too, was a frequent traveller on horseback, particularly on the Chester and Holyhead road. He seems once to have tried the Chester stage, and ever after to have taken to the saddle. Riding thus in 1710 from Chester to London in five days, he describes himself as “weary the first, almost dead the second, tolerable the third, and well enough the rest,” but “glad enough of the fatigue, which has served for exercise.” After making the journey from London to Holyhead and Dublin in 1726, he wrote to Pope, describing “the quick change” he had made in seven days from London to Dublin, “through many nations and languages unknown to the civilised world.” He had expected the enterprise, “with moderate fortune,” to take ten or eleven days. “I have often reflected,” he adds, “in how few hours, with a swift horse or a strong gale, a man may come among a people as unknown to him as the Antipodes.” Swift was by no means indulging in playful banter when he wrote this. He felt a genuine cause for wonder in such expedition; and certainly if the rustic speech of rural England was like a strange and uncivilised tongue, how much more strange and uncivilised the languages of Wales and Ireland must have sounded!
The Dean’s last recorded journey was made in September 1727. The little memorandum-book, tattered and discoloured, in which he noted down many of its incidents is still in existence, and is not only a valuable document in the story of Swift’s life, but is equally precious and interesting as an intimate record of the daily trials and troubles of a traveller in those times, set down while he was still on his journey and thus echoing every passing feeling. Swift was in bad health and worse spirits when he wrote this diary at Holyhead, where he was detained for seven days by contrary winds. It was written for lack of employment afforded to a cultivated mind in the dreary little seaport, and under the influence of a great sorrow. “Stella” lay dying over in Ireland, and he, raging with impatience at Holyhead, filled his notebook with aimless scribbling. “All this to divert thinking,” he writes, sadly, in the midst of it.
The original notebook is still in existence, and is carefully preserved at the South Kensington Museum, to which it was bequeathed by John Forster. Inside its cover the handwriting of successive owners gives the relic an authentic pedigree, and Swift himself humorously declares how he came into possession of the blank book: “This book I stole from the Right Honourable George Dodington, Esq., one of the Lords of the Treasury, but the scribblings are all my own.” This George Dodington was George Bubb Dodington, afterwards Lord Melcombe.
On the first page are hastily-scribbled memoranda for appointments: “In Fleet Street, about a clerk of St. Patrick’s Cathedral”; “Spectacles for seventy years old”; “Godfrey in Southampton Street”; “Hungary waters and palsy drops.”
Then the Dean left London, riding horseback, with his servant, Watt, for company on another nag, and carrying his master’s travelling valise. The heavy luggage had been sent on by waggon to Chester. Watt, as we shall presently see, was a veritable Handy Andy, always doing the wrong thing, or the right thing in a wrong way. Swift carried the notebook in his pocket, without writing anything of his journey in it until Holyhead was reached.
A few unfinished lines on an old cassock, out at elbows, preface the diary, which begins abruptly: “Friday at 11 in the morning I left Chester. It was Sept. 22, 1727. I baited at a blind ale house 7 miles from Chester. I thence rode to Ridland (Rhuddlan), in all 22 miles. I lay there: bred, bed, meat and tolerable wine. I left Ridland a quarter after 4 morn on Saturday, slept, on Penmanmaur (Penmaenmawr), examined about my sign verses the Inn is to be on t’other side, therefore the verses to be changed.”[A]
Here, on the verge of the wild Welsh coast, the way was so uncertain and dangerous that travellers had of necessity to employ guides, who conducted them thence to Bangor, and across Anglesey to Holyhead. The roads in Anglesey were unworthy of the name, and only a little better than horse-tracks; while the inhabitants of the isle spoke only Welsh, and understood not a word of English. Nearly two hundred years have passed, but although the roads have been made good, the folks of Anglesey speak English no more than they did then, when the guides acted the part of interpreters as well.
Swift, therefore, is found at Conway, mentioning the guide who had already brought him safely over Penmaenmawr: “I baited at Conway, the guide going to another Inn; the maid of the old Inn saw me in the street and said that was my horse, she knew me. There I dined, and sent for Ned Holland, a Squire famous for being mentioned in Mr. Lyndsay’s verses to Day Morice. I there again saw Hook’s tomb, who was the 41st child of his mother, and had himself 27 children, he dyed about 1638. There is a note here that one of his posterity new furbished up the inscription. I had read in Abp. Williams’ Life that he was buryed in an obscure Church in North Wales. I enquired, and heard that it was at[B] ... Church, within a mile of Bangor, whither I was going. I went to the Church, the guide grumbling. I saw the Tomb with his Statue kneeling (in marble). It began thus (Hospes lege et relege quod in hoc obscuro sacello non expectares. Hic jacet omnium Praesulum celeberrimus). I came to Bangor and crossed the Ferry, a mile from it, where there is an Inn, which, if it be well kept, will break Bangor. There I lay; it was 22 miles from Holyhead.”