A Walk from London to John O'Groat's / With Notes by the Way

by Elihu Burritt

I was much pleased to notice what honor was put upon one of our humble and despised trees in Burghley House park, as in the grounds of other noblemen. There was not one that spread such delicate and graceful tresses on the breeze as our White Birch; not one that fanned it with such a gentle, musical flutter of silver-lined leaves; not one that wore a bodice of such virgin white from head to foot, or that showed such long, tapering fingers against the sky. I was glad to see such justice done to a tree in the noblest parks in England, which with us has been treated with such disdain and contumely. When I saw it here in such glory and honor, and thought how, notwithstanding its Caucasian complexion, it is regarded as a nuisance in our woods, meadows and pastures, so that any man who owns, or can borrow an axe, may cut it down without leave or license wherever he finds it—when I saw this disparity in its status in the two Englands, I resolved to plead its cause in my own with new zeal and fidelity.

CHAPTER XIII.

WALK TO OAKHAM—THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SPRING—THE ENGLISH GENTRY—A SPECIMEN OF THE CLASS—MELTON MOWBRAY AND ITS SPECIALITIES—BELVOIR VALE AND ITS BEAUTY—THOUGHTS ON THE BLIND PAINTER.

From Stamford to Oakham was an afternoon walk which I greatly enjoyed. This was the first week of harvest, and the first of August. How wonderfully the seasons are localised and subdivided. How diversified is the economy of light and heat! That field of wheat, thick, tall and ripe for the sickle, was green and apparently growing through all the months of last winter. What a phenomenon it would have been, on the first of February last, to a New England farmer, suddenly transported from his snow-buried hills to the view of this landscape the same day! Not a spire of grass or grain was alive when he left his own homestead. All was cold and dead. The very earth was frozen to the solidity and sound of granite. It was a relief to his eye to see the snow fall upon the scene and hide it two feet deep for months. He looks upon this, then upon the one he left behind. This looks full of luxuriant life, as green as his in May. It has three months’ start of his dead and buried crop. He walks across it; his shoes sink almost to the instep in the soft soil. He sees birds hopping about in it without overcoats. Surely, he says to himself, this is a favored land. Here it lies on the latitudes of Labrador, and yet its midwinter fields are as green as ours in the last month of Spring. At this rate the farmers here must harvest their wheat before the ears of mine are formed. But he counts without Nature. The American sun overtakes and distances the English by a full month. Here is the compensation for six consecutive months in which the New England farmer must house his plough and not turn a furrow.

Doubtless, as much light and heat brighten and warm one country as the other in the aggregate of a year. But there is a great difference in the economy of distribution. In England, the sun spreads its warmth more evenly over the four seasons of the year. What it withholds from Summer it gives to Winter, and makes it wear the face of Spring through its shortest and coldest days. But then Spring loses a little from this equalising dispensation. It is not the resurrection from death and the grave as it is in America. Children are not waiting here at the sepulchre of the season, as with us, watching and listening for its little Bluebird angel to warble from the first budding tree top, “It is risen!” They do not come running home with happy eyes, dancing for joy, and shouting through the half open door, “O, mother, Spring has come! We’ve heard the Bluebird! Hurrah! Spring has come. We saw the Phebee on the top of the saw-mill!” Here Spring makes no sensation; takes no sudden leap into the seat of Winter, but comes in gently, like the law of primogeniture or the British Constitution. It is slow and decorous in its movements. It is conservative, treats its predecessor with much deference, and makes no sudden and radical changes in the face of things. It comes in with no Lord Mayor’s Day, and blows no trumpets, and bends no triumphal arches to grace its entree. Few new voices in the tree-tops hail its advent. No choirs of tree-toads fiddle in the fens. No congregation of frogs at twilight gather to the green edges of the unfettered pond to sing their Old Hundred, led by venerable Signor Cronker, in his bright, buskin doublet, mounted on a floating stump, and beating time with a bulrush. No Shad-spirits with invisible wings, perform their undulating vespers in the heavens, to let the fishermen know that it is time to look to their nets. Even the hens of the farm-yard cackle with no new tone of hope and animation at the birth of the English Spring. The fact is, it is a baby three months old when it is baptised. It is really born at Christmas instead of Easter, and makes no more stir in the family circle of the seasons than any familiar face would at a farmer’s table.

In a utilitarian point of view, it is certainly an immense advantage to all classes in this country, that Nature has tempered her climates to it in this kindly way. I will not run off upon that line of reflection here, but will make it the subject of a few thoughts somewhere this side of John O’Groat’s. But what England gains over us in the practical, she loses in the poetical, in this economy of the seasons. Her Spring does not thrill like a sudden revelation, as with us. It does not come out like the new moon, hanging its delicate silver crescent in the western pathway of the setting sun, which everybody tries to see first over the right shoulder, for the very luck of the coincidence. Still, both countries should be contented and happy under this dispensation of Nature. The balance is very satisfactory, and well suited to the character and habits of the two peoples. The Americans are more radical and sensational than the English; more given to sudden changes and stirring events. Sterne generally gets the credit of saying that pretty thought first, “Providence tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.” A French writer puts it the other way, and more practically: “Providence tempers the wool of the lamb to the wind.” This is far better and more natural. But it may be truly said that Providence tempers the seasons to the temperaments and customs of the two nations.

Just before reaching Oakham, I passed a grand mansion, standing far back from the turnpike road, on a commanding eminence, flanked with extensive plantations. The wide avenue leading to it looked a full mile in length. Lawns and lakes, which mirrored the trees with equal distinctness, suffused the landscape of the park like evening smiles of Nature. It was indeed a goodly heritage for one man; and he only mounted a plain Mr. to his name, although I learned that he could count his farms by the dozen. I was told that the annual dinner given to his tenant farmers came off the previous day at the inn where I lodged. A sumptuous banquet was provided for them, presided over by the steward of the estate; as the great Mr. did not honor the plebeian company with his presence. This is a feature of the structure of English society which the best read American would not be likely to recognise without travelling somewhat extensively in the country. The British Nobility, the great, world-renowned Middle Class, and the poor laboring population, constitute the three great divisions of the people and include them all in his mind. He is apt to leave out of count the Gentry, the great untitled MISTERS, who come in between the nobility and middle-men, and constitute the connecting link between them. “The fine old English gentleman, all of the olden time,” is supposed to belong to this class. They make up most of “the old county families,” of which you hear more than you read. They are generally large landholders, owning from twenty to one hundred farms. They live in grand old mansions, surrounded with liveried servants, and inspire a mild awe and respectful admiration, not only in the common country people, but in the minds of persons in whom an American would not look for such homage to untitled rank. They hunt with horses and dogs over the grounds of their tenant farmers, and the latter often act as game-beaters for them at their “shootings.” When one of them owns a whole village, church and all, he is generally called “the Squire,” but most of them are squired without the definite article. They still boast of as good specimens of “the fine old English gentleman” as the country can show; and I am inclined to think it is not an unfounded pretension, although I have not yet come in contact with many of the class.

One of this county squirocracy I know personally and well,—and other Americans know him as well as myself,—who, though living in a palace of his own, once occupied by an exiled French sovereign, is just as simple and honest as a child in every feature of his disposition and deportment. Every year he has a Festival in his park, lasting two or three days. It is a kind of out-door Parliament and a Greenwich Fair combined, as it would seem at first sight to an incidental spectator. I do not believe anything in the rest of the wide world could equal this gathering, for many peculiar features of enjoyment. It is made up of both sexes and all ages and conditions; especially of the laboring classes. They come out strong on these occasions. The round and red faced boys and girls of villages and hamlets for a great distance around look forward to this annual frolic with exhilarating expectation. Never was romping and racing and the amorous forfeit plays of the ring got up under more favorable auspices, or with more pleasant surroundings. It would do any man’s heart good, who was ever a genuine boy, to see the venerable squire and his lady presiding over a race between competing couples of ploughmens’ boys, from ten to fifteen years of age, running their rounds in the park, bare-footed, bare-headed, with faces as round and red as a ripe pumpkin, and hair of the same color whipping the air as they neck-and-neck it in the middle of the heat. When the winners of the prizes receive their rewards at his hands, his kind words and the radiant benevolence of his face they value more than the conquest and the coins they win.

Then there are intellectual entertainments and deliberative proceedings of grave moment arranged for the elder portion of the great congregation. While groups of blushing lads and lasses are hunting the handkerchief in the hustle and tussle of the ring under the great, solemn elms, a scene may be witnessed on the lawn nearer the mansion that ought to have been painted long ago. Two or three double-horse wagons are ranged end to end in the shade, and planks are placed along from one end to the other, making a continuous seat for a score or two of orators. In front of this dozen-wheeled tribune rows of seats, capable of holding several hundred persons, are arranged within hearing distance. When these are filled and surrounded by a standing wall of men and women, three or four deep, and when the orators of the day ascend over the wheels to the long wagon-seat, you have a scene and an assembly the like of which you find nowhere else in Christendom. No Saxon parliament of the Heptarchy could “hold a candle to it.” Never, in any age or country of free speech, did individual ideas, idiosyncrasies, and liberty of conscience have freer scope and play. Never did all the isms of philanthropy, politics, or of social and moral reform generally have such a harmonious trysting time of it. Never was there a platform erected for discussing things local and general so catholic as the one now resting upon the wheels of those farm wagons. Every year the bland and venerable host succeeds in widening the area of debate. I was invited to be present at the Festival this year, but was too far on the road to John O’Groat’s to participate in a pleasure I have often enjoyed. But I read his resume of the year’s doings, aspects and prospects from Japan to Hudson’s Bay with lively interest and valuable instruction. He seldom presides himself as chairman, but leaves that post of honor to be filled, if possible, by the citizen of some foreign country, if he can speak English tolerably. This gives a more cosmopolitan aspect to the assembly. But he himself always makes what in Parliament would be called “a financial statement,” without the reference to money matters. He sums up the significance of all the great events of the year, bearing upon human progress in general, and upon each specific enterprise in particular. With palatial mansions, parks, and farms great and small, scattered through several counties, he is the greatest radical in England. He distances the Chartists altogether in his programme, and adds several new points to their political creed. He not only advocates manhood suffrage, but womanhood suffrage, and woman-seats in Parliament. Then he is a great friend of a reform which the Chartists grievously overlook, and which would make thousands of them voters if they would adopt it. That is, Total Abstinence from Tobacco, as well as from Ardent Spirits. Thus, no report of modern times equals the good Squire’s summing-up, which he gives on these occasions, from the great farm-wagon tribune, to the multitudinous and motley congregation assembled under his park trees. This year it was unusually rich and piquant, from the expanded area of events and aspects. In presenting these, as bearing upon the causes of Temperance, Peace, Anti-War, Anti-Slavery, Anti-Tobacco, Anti-Capital Punishment, Anti-Church-Rates, Free Trade, Woman’s Rights, Parliamentary Reform, Social Reform, Scientific Progress, Discovery of the Sources of the Nile, and other important movements, he was necessarily obliged to be somewhat discursive. But he generalised with much ease and perspicuity, and conducted the thread of his discourse, like a rivulet of light, through the histories of the year; transporting the mind of his audience from doings in Japan to those in America, from Poland to Mexico, and through stirring regions of Geography, Politics, Philanthropy, Social Science and Economy, by gentle and interesting transitions. This annual statement is very valuable and instructive, and should have a wider publicity than it usually obtains.

When “the fine old English gentleman all of the olden time” has concluded his resume of the year’s progress, and the prospects it leaves to the one incoming, the orators of the different causes which he has thus reported, arise one after the other, and the bright air and the green foliage of the over-spreading trees, as well as the listening multitude below are stirred with fervid speeches, sometimes interspersed with “music from the band.” The Festival is wound up by a banquet in the hall, given by the munificent host to a large number of guests, representing the various good movements advocated from the platform described. Many Americans have spoken from that rostrum, and sat at that banquet table in years gone by, and they will attest to the correctness of these slight delineations of the character of the host and of the annual festival that will perpetuate his name in long and pleasant remembrance.