One other reminiscence occurs to me in connection with the subject of walking. While I was living with my parents at Harrow, my mother’s brother, Mr. Henry Milton, was living with his family at Fulham. And one Sunday morning I walked from Harrow to Fulham before breakfast on a visit to him. As may be supposed, I was abundantly ready to do ample justice to the very solid and varied breakfast placed before me, but, after having done so, was hardly equally ready to accompany my uncle’s family to Fulham Church to hear the Bishop of London preach. This, however, it behoved me to do, not without great misgiving as to the effect that the Bishop’s sermon might have on me after my twelve miles walk and very copious breakfast—especially as my uncle’s pew was exactly in front and in the vicinity of the pulpit! So, minded to do my best under the difficult circumstances, I stood up during the sermon. All in vain! Nature too peremptorily bade me sleep. I slept, with the result of executing an uninterrupted series of profound bows to the preacher, the suddenness and jerky nature of which evidently betokened the entirety of my agreement with his arguments. I feared the reproaches, which I doubted not awaited me on my way home. But my uncle contented himself with saying, “When you go to sleep during a sermon, Tom, never stand up to do it!”
To sum up the story of my certainly unsuccessful, but not entirely profitless life at Oxford, I may say that I was not altogether an idle man, nor ever in any degree a sharer in any of the “faster” phases of academical life. I was always a reader. But what academical good could come to a man who was reading The Diversions of Purley, or Plot’s Oxfordshire, or Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, or Brown’s Vulgar Errors, when he ought to have been reading Aristotle’s Ethics? Among other reminiscences of the sort, my diary accuses me, for instance, for having taken from the library of Magdalen Hall (and read!) a volume called Gaffarel’s Curiosities. I suppose no other living man has read it! The work contains among other “curiosities,” a chapter “of incredible nonsense,” as my diary calls it, on the construction and proper use of Talismans!
Alas, no “honours” were granted for proficiency in such studies!
CHAPTER X.
Before quitting a phase of my life, which many, if not most, old men are wont to look back on as their happiest time, but which I, by so considering, should grievously wrong many a subsequent period, I may string together at random a few notes from my diaries, which may seem to contribute some touch or trait to the story of the way we lived sixty years since.
The way men lived in Germany at that date, I find given in a letter from the Baron de Zandt to my mother, as follows: “In many parts of Germany,” says the Baron, who, as I very well remember, understood what good living was, “a man may be boarded and lodged comfortably for £26 a year. If he prefers economy to comfort, it might be done for considerably less.”
From the journal of a walking tour in South Devon, performed in the year 1831, I take the well-nigh incredible statement, that no tobacconist ex professo could at that date be found in Plymouth! “I succeeded after some research,” says the diary, “in getting some tolerable tobacco from a chymist.” Doubtless plenty of tobacco was to be had, if I had known where to look for it—at chandlers’ shops and taverns. But I have no doubt that the statement in the fifty-five-year-old “text” is correct. No tobacconist’s shop was then to be found in Plymouth.
In July, 1832, I was walking in Wales, and reaching Caermarthen in assize time (where Judge Alderson, as is recorded, was trying prisoners on the Crown side), found much difficulty in getting any accommodation for bed or even board. But at length a commercial gentleman at the Ivy Bush, the principal inn, “entering into conversation in a patronising sort of way, told me it was a herror to suppose that commercial men were hadverse to gentlemen making use of the commercial room provided they was gentlemen. For himself, he was always most ’appy to associate with gentlemen;” and, in fine, invited me to join their table, which I did at two o’clock. One of the assembled party—there were some fifteen or sixteen of them—was formally named president for the day, and took the head of the table. We were excruciatingly genteel. I, in my ignorance, asked for beer, but was with much politeness informed that malt liquor was not used at their table. Every man was expected to consume a pint of most atrocious sherry at 5s. 6d., which I suppose compensated the landlord for the wonderfully small price of the dinner. A dinner of three courses, consisting of salmon, chicken, venison, three or four made dishes, and pastry, was put before us. I was surprised at the gorgeousness of this feast, and began to have alarming anticipations of the amari aliquid which must follow. But I was assured that this was the ordinary every-day fare of the “commercial gentlemen,” and the bill for the repast was two shillings! My diary records that the conversation at table in no wise savoured of trade in any of its branches. Shakespeare and Walter Scott were descanted on in turn, and one dapper little man, who travelled in cutlery, averred that Sir Walter had on one occasion been exceedingly polite to him, and he should always say to the end of his life that he was a gentleman.
At Dolgelly I was struck by the practice prevailing there of tolling, after the ringing of the curfew, a number of strokes on the biggest bell equal to the number of the days which had elapsed of the current month. I wonder whether they do so still?
I went out of my way, I find, in the course of the same journey, in order to go from Liverpool to Manchester by the new railway, which to me, as to thousands of others, was an object of infinite curiosity and interest. My diary notes that there were fifteen carriages attached to the engine, each carrying twelve passengers. Two of these were first-class, and the fare for the journey to Manchester in them was 5s.; in the others the fare was 3s. 6d. The train I was to travel by was called a second-class train. The first-class trains carried no second-class passengers, and did the journey of fifty-two miles in one hour and a half. They stopped only once on the way. The second-class trains stopped frequently, and were two hours on the road. I estimated the speed at something over twenty-five miles an hour, and remark in my diary that “that immense rapidity was manifested to the senses only by looking at the objects passed.”