This is a very fine corn country: chalk at bottom: stony near the surface, in some places: here and there a chalk-pit in the hills: the shape of the ground somewhat like that of the broadest valleys in Wiltshire; but the fields not without fences as they are there: fields from fifteen to forty acres: the hills not downs, as in Wiltshire; but cultivated all over. The houses white and thatched, as they are in all chalk countries. The valley at Scamblesby has a little rivulet running down it, just as in all the chalk countries. The land continues nearly the same to Louth, which lies in a deep dell, with beautiful pastures on the surrounding hills, like those that I once admired at Shaftesbury, in Dorsetshire, and like that near St. Austle, in Cornwall, which I described in 1808.
At Louth the wise corporation had refused to let us have the playhouse; but my friends had prepared a very good place; and I had an opportunity of addressing crowded audiences two nights running. At no place have I been better pleased than at Louth. Mr. Paddison, solicitor, a young gentleman whom I had the honour to know slightly before, and to know whom, whether I estimate by character or by talent, would be an honour to any man, was particularly attentive to us. Mr. Naull, ironmonger, who had had the battle to fight for me for twenty years, expressed his exultation at my triumph in a manner that showed that he justly participated it with me. I breakfasted at Mr. Naull’s with a gentleman 88 or 89 years of age, whose joy at shaking me by the hand was excessive. “Ah!” said he, “where are now those savages who, at Hull, threatened to kill me for raising my voice against this system?” This is a very fine town, and has a beautiful church, nearly equal to that at Boston.
We left Louth on the morning of Thursday the 15th, and got to Barton on the Humber by about noon, over a very fine country, large fields, fine pastures, flocks of those great sheep, of from 200 to 1,000 in a flock; and here at Barton, we arrived at the northern point of this noble county, having never seen one single acre of waste land, and not one acre that would be called bad land, in the south of England. The Wolds, or high-lands, lie away to our right, from Horncastle to near Barton; and on the other side of the Wolds lie the Marshes of Lincolnshire, which extend along the coast from Boston to the mouth of the Humber, on the bank of which we were at Barton, Hull being on the opposite side of the river, which is here about five miles wide, and which we had to cross in a steam-boat.
But let me not forget Great Grimsby, at which we changed horses, and breakfasted, in our way from Louth to Barton. “What the devil!” the reader will say, “should you want to recollect that place for? Why do you want not to forget that sink of corruption? What could you find there to be snatched from everlasting oblivion, except for the purpose of being execrated?” I did, however, find something there worthy of being made known, not only to every man in England but to every man in the world; and not to mention it here would be to be guilty of the greatest injustice.
To my surprise I found a good many people assembled at the inn-door, evidently expecting my arrival. While breakfast was preparing, I wished to speak to the bookseller of the place, if there were one, and to give him a list of my books and writings, that he might place it in his shop. When he came, I was surprised to find that he had it already, and that he, occasionally, sold my books. Upon my asking him how he got it, he said that it was brought down from London and given to him by a Mr. Plaskitt, who, he said, had all my writings, and who, he said, he was sure would be very glad to see me; but that he lived above a mile from the town. A messenger, however, had gone off to carry the news, and Mr. Plaskitt arrived before we had done breakfast, bringing with him a son and a daughter. And from the lips of this gentleman, a man of as kind and benevolent appearance and manners as I ever beheld in my life, I had the following facts; namely, “that one of his sons sailed for New York some years ago; that the ship was cast away on the shores of Long Island; that the captain, crew, and passengers all perished; that the wrecked vessel was taken possession of by people on the coast; that his son had a watch in his trunk, or chest, a purse with fourteen shillings in it, and divers articles of wearing apparel; that the Americans, who searched the wreck, sent all these articles safely to England to him”; “and,” said he, “I keep the purse and the money at home, and here is the watch in my pocket”!
It would have been worth the expense of coming from London to Grimsby, if for nothing but to learn this fact, which I record, not only in justice to the free people of America, and particularly in justice to my late neighbours in Long Island, but in justice to the character of mankind. I publish it as something to counterbalance the conduct of the atrocious monsters who plunder the wrecks on the coast of Cornwall, and, as I am told, on the coasts here in the east of the island.
Away go, then, all the accusations upon the character of the Yankees. People may call them sharp, cunning, overreaching; and when they have exhausted the vocabulary of their abuse, the answer is found in this one fact, stated by Mr. Joshua Plaskitt, of Great Grimsby, in Lincolnshire, Old England. The person who sent the things to Mr. Plaskitt was named Jones. It did not occur to me to ask his christian name, nor to inquire what was the particular place where he lived in Long Island. I request Mr. Plaskitt to contrive to let me know these particulars; as I should like to communicate them to friends that I have on the north side of that island. However, it would excite no surprise there, that one of their countrymen had acted this part; for every man of them, having the same opportunity, would do the same. Their forefathers carried to New England the nature and character of the people of Old England, before national debts, paper-money, septennial bills, standing armies, dead-weights, and jubilees, had beggared and corrupted the people.
At Hull I lectured (I laugh at the word) to about seven hundred persons on the same evening that I arrived from Louth, which was on Thursday the 15th. We had what they call the summer theatre, which was crowded in every part except on the stage; and the next evening the stage was crowded too. The third evening was merely accidental, no previous notice having been given of it. On the Saturday I went in the middle of the day to Beverley; saw there the beautiful minster, and some of the fine horses which they show there at this season of the year; dined with about fifty farmers; made a speech to them and about a hundred more, perhaps; and got back to Hull time enough to go to the theatre there.
The country round Hull appears to exceed even that of Lincolnshire. The three mornings that I was at Hull I walked out in three different directions, and found the country everywhere fine. To the east lies the Holderness country. I used to wonder that Yorkshire, to which I, from some false impression in my youth, had always attached the idea of sterility, should send us of the south those beautiful cattle with short horns and straight and deep bodies. You have only to see the country to cease to wonder at this. It lies on the north side of the mouth of the Humber; is as flat and fat as the land between Holbeach and Boston, without, as they tell me, the necessity of such numerous ditches. The appellation “Yorkshire bite”; the acute sayings ascribed to Yorkshiremen; and their quick manner, I remember, in the army. When speaking of what country a man was, one used to say, in defence of the party, “York, but honest.” Another saying was that it was a bare common that a Yorkshireman would go over without taking a bite. Every one knows the story of the gentleman who, upon finding that a boot-cleaner in the south was a Yorkshireman, and expressing his surprise that he was not become master of the inn, received for answer, “Ah, sir, but master is York too!” And that of the Yorkshire boy who, seeing a gentleman eating some eggs, asked the cook to give him a little salt; and upon being asked what he could want with salt, he said, “Perhaps that gentleman may give me an egg presently.”
It is surprising what effect sayings like these produce upon the mind. From one end to the other of the kingdom, Yorkshiremen are looked upon as being keener than other people; more eager in pursuit of their own interests; more sharp and more selfish. For my part, I was cured with regard to the people long before I saw Yorkshire. In the army, where we see men of all counties, I always found Yorkshiremen distinguished for their frank manners and generous disposition. In the United States, my kind and generous friends of Pennsylvania were the children and descendants of Yorkshire parents; and, in truth, I long ago made up my mind that this hardness and sharpness ascribed to Yorkshiremen arose from the sort of envy excited by that quickness, that activity, that buoyancy of spirits, which bears them up through adverse circumstances, and their conquent success in all the situations of life. They, like the people of Lancashire, are just the very reverse of being cunning and selfish; be they farmers, or be they what they may, you get at the bottom of their hearts in a minute. Everything they think soon gets to the tongue, and out it comes, heads and tails, as fast as they can pour it. Fine materials for Oliver to work on! If he had been sent to the west instead of the north, he would have found people there on whom he would have exercised his powers in vain. You are not to have every valuable quality in the same man and the same people: you are not to have prudent caution united with quickness and volubility.