THIRD AGE.
History is silent as to the methods by which men were enabled to endure the tedium of journeys by the heavy coaches of the olden time. The absence of all notion of travelling faster might, indeed, be no inconsiderable aid,—an aid of which travellers are at present, for the most part, deprived; since the mail-coach passenger, the envy of the poor tenant of the carrier’s cart, feels envy, in his turn, of the privileged beings who shoot along the northern rail-road; while they, perhaps, are sighing for the time when they shall be able to breakfast at one extremity of the kingdom, and dine at the other. When once the idea of not going fast enough enters a traveller’s mind, ennui is pretty sure to follow; and it may be to this circumstance that the patience of our forefathers, under their long incarceration on the road, was owing—if patience they had. Now, a traveller who is too much used to journeying to be amused, as a child is, by the mere process of travelling, is dismayed alike if there be a full number of passengers, and if there be none but himself. In the first case, there is danger of delay from the variety of deposits of persons and goods; and in the second, there is an equal danger of delay from the coachman having all his own way, and the certainty, besides, of the absence of all opportunity of shaking off the dulness of his own society.
Mr. Reid, a sociable young barrister, who had never found himself at a loss on a journey, was left desolate one day last summer when he least expected it. He had taken his wife and child down to the south, in order to establish them by the sea-side for a few weeks; and he was now travelling up to town by the stage-coach, in very amusing company, as he thought, for the first stage, but presently in solitude. Supposing that his companions were going all the way, he took his time about making the most of them, and lost the opportunity. There was a sensible farmer, who pointed right and left to the sheep on the downs—green downs—retiring in long sweeps from the road; and he had much to relate of the methods of cultivation which had been pursued here, there, and everywhere,—with the Barn Field, and Rick Mead, and Pond-side Field, and Brook Hollow, and many other pretty places that he indicated. He had also stores of information on the farmer’s favourite subject of complaint—the state of the poor. He could give the history of all the well-meant attempts of my lord this, and my lady that, and colonel the other, to make employment, and institute prizes of almshouses, and induce their neighbours to lay out more on patches of land than less helpless folks would think it worth while to bestow. Meantime, a smart young lady in the opposite corner was telling her widowed chaperon why she could not abide the country, and would not be tempted to leave dear London any more,—namely, that the country was chalky, and whitened the hems of all her petticoats. The widow, in return, assured the unbelieving girl that the country was not chalky all over the world, and that she had actually seen, with her own eyes, the junction of a white, a red, and a black road,—very convenient, as one might choose one’s walk by the colour of one’s gown. The widow at the same time let fall her wish to have the charge—merely for the sake of pleasant occupation—of the household of a widower, to whose daughters she could teach everything desirable; especially if they were intended to look after dairy and poultry-yard, and such things.
“Thank’ee, ma’am,” said the farmer, as she looked full at him; “my daughters are some of them grown up; and they have got on without much teaching since their mother died.”
Mr. Reid promised himself to gain more information about the widow’s estimate of her own capabilities; but she and her charge were not yet going to “dear London.” They got out at the first country town, just after the farmer had thrust himself half out of the window to stop the coach, flung himself on the stout horse that was waiting for him at the entrance of a green lane, and trotted off, with a prodigious exertion of knee, elbow, and coat-flap.
Mr. Reid had soon done thinking of the widow, and of the damsel who had displayed so intimate a knowledge of rural life. Pauperism lasted longer; but this was only another version of a dismal story with which he was already too well acquainted. He was glad to think of something else. He found that he got most sun by riding backward, and most wind by riding forward, and made his election in favour of the latter. He discovered, after a momentary doubt, that his umbrella was safe, and that there was no occasion to trouble his knees any longer with his great-coat. He perceived that the coach had been new-lined, and he thought the lace suited the lining uncommonly well. He wondered whether the people would be as confoundedly long in changing horses at every stage as they had been at the first. It would be very provoking to arrive in town too late for dinner at G——’s. Ah! the women by the road-side found it a fine day for drying the linen they had washed. How it blew about, flapping, with a noise like mill-sails; big-sleeved pinafores and dancing stockings! This was a pretty country to live in: the gentlemen’s houses were sufficiently sheltered, and the cottages had neat orchards behind them; and one would think pains had been taken with the green lanes—just in the medium as they were between rankness and bareness. What an advantage roads among little hills have in the clear stream under the hedge,—a stream like this, dimpling and oozing, now over pebbles, and now among weeds! That hedge would make a delicious foreground for a picture,—the earth being washed away from the twisted roots, and they covered with brown moss, with still a cowslip here and there nodding to itself in the water as the wind passed by. By the way, that bit of foreground might be kept in mind for his next paper for the “New Monthly.” It would be easy to give his subject a turn that would allow that hedge and its cowslip to be brought in. What had not Victor Hugo made of a yellow flower, in a scene to which nobody who had read it would need a second reference! But this well, to the left, was even better than the hedge: it must have been described already; for it looked as if put there for the purpose. What a damp nook in the hedge it stood in, with three old yews above it, and tufts of long grass to fringe the place! What a well-used chain and ladle, and what merry, mischievous children, pushing one another into the muddy pool where the drippings fell, and splashing each other, under pretence of drinking! He was afraid of losing the impression of this place, so much dusty road as he had to pass through, and so many new objects to meet before he could sit down to write; unless, indeed, he did it now. Why should not he write his paper now? It was a good idea—a capital thought!
Three backs of letters and a pencil were presently found, and a flat parcel in one of the window-pockets, which served as a desk, when the feet were properly planted on the opposite seat. The lines were none of the straightest, at first; and the dots and stops wandered far out of their right places; while the long words looked somewhat hieroglyphical. But the coach stopped; and Mr. Reid forgot to observe how much longer it took than before to change horses while he was the only passenger. He looked up only once, and then saw so charming an old granny, with her little Tommy, carrying a toad-in-a-hole to the baker’s, that he was rewarded for his momentary idleness, and resolved to find a place for them too, near the well and the mossy hedge.
He was now as sorry to be off again as before to stop. The horses were spirited, and the road was rough. His pencil slipped and jerked, this way and that. Presently his eyes ached: his ideas were jostled away. It was impossible to compose while the manual act was so troublesome; it was nonsense to attempt it. Nothing but idleness would do in travelling; so the blunted pencil was put by, and the eye was refreshed once more with green.
But now a new sort of country was opening. The hedges were gone, and a prodigious stretch of fallow on either hand looked breezy and pleasant enough at first; and the lark sprang from the furrow so blithely, that Reid longed to stop the coach, that he might hear its trilling. But the lark could not be heard, and was soon out of sight; and the perspective of furrows became as wearying as making pothooks had been. Reid betook himself to examining the window-pockets. There were two or three tidy parcels for solicitors, of course; and a little one, probably for a maid-servant, as there were seven lines of direction upon it. The scent of strawberries came from a little basket, coolly lined with leaves, and addressed to Master Jones, at a school in a town to be presently passed through. Reid hoped, for the boy’s sake, that there was a letter too; and he found an interstice, through which he could slip half-a-dozen burnt almonds, which had remained in his pocket after treating his own child. What speculations there would be, next holiday time, about how the almonds got in! Two or three other little parcels were disregarded; for among them lay one of more importance to Reid than all the rest,—three newspapers, tied round once with a bit of red tape, and directed, in pencil, to be left at the Blue Lion till called for. Reid took the liberty of untying the tape, and amusing himself with the precious pieces of type that had fallen in his way. There was little political intelligence in these papers, and that was of old date; but a little goes a great way with a solitary traveller; and when the better parts of a newspaper are disposed of, enough remains in the drier parts to employ the intellect that courts suggestion. That which is the case with all objects on which the attention is occupied, is eminently the case with a newspaper—that whatever the mind happens to be full of there receives addition, and that the mood in which it is approached there meets with confirmation. Reid had heard much from the farmer of the hardships which individuals suffer from a wasteful public expenditure; and his eye seemed to catch something which related to this matter, to whatever corner of the papers it wandered.