The weather is clearing up; our horses are saddled, and we are off.
RIDE, FROM BURGHCLERE TO PETERSFIELD.
Hurstbourne Tarrant (or Uphusband),
Monday, 7th November 1825.
We came off from Burghclere yesterday afternoon, crossing Lord Caernarvon’s park, going out of it on the west side of Beacon Hill, and sloping away to our right over the downs towards Woodcote. The afternoon was singularly beautiful. The downs (even the poorest of them) are perfectly green; the sheep on the downs look, this year, like fatting sheep: we came through a fine flock of ewes, and, looking round us, we saw, all at once, seven flocks, on different parts of the downs, each flock on an average containing at least 500 sheep.
It is about six miles from Burghclere to this place; and we made it about twelve; not in order to avoid the turnpike-road, but because we do not ride about to see turnpike-roads; and, moreover, because I had seen this most monstrously hilly turnpike-road before. We came through a village called Woodcote, and another called Binley. I never saw any inhabited places more recluse than these. Yet into these the all-searching eye of the taxing Thing reaches. Its Exciseman can tell it what is doing even in the little odd corner of Binley; for even there I saw, over the door of a place, not half so good as the place in which my fowls roost, “Licensed to deal in tea and tobacco.” Poor, half-starved wretches of Binley! The hand of taxation, the collection for the sinecures and pensions, must fix its nails even in them, who really appeared too miserable to be called by the name of people. Yet there was one whom the taxing Thing had licensed (good God! licensed!) to serve out cat-lap to these wretched creatures! And our impudent and ignorant newspaper scribes talk of the degraded state of the people of Spain! Impudent impostors! Can they show a group so wretched, so miserable, so truly enslaved as this, in all Spain? No: and those of them who are not sheer fools know it well. But there would have been misery equal to this in Spain if the Jews and Jobbers could have carried the Bond-scheme into effect. The people of Spain were, through the instrumentality of patriot loan-makers, within an inch of being made as “enlightened” as the poor, starving things of Binley. They would soon have had people “licensed” to make them pay the Jews for permission to chew tobacco, or to have a light in their dreary abodes. The people of Spain were preserved from this by the French army, for which the Jews cursed the French army; and the same army put an end to those “bonds,” by means of which pious Protestants hoped to be able to get at the convents in Spain, and thereby put down “idolatry” in that country. These bonds seem now not to be worth a farthing; and so after all the Spanish people will have no one “licensed” by the Jews to make them pay for turning the fat of their sheep into candles and soap. These poor creatures that I behold here pass their lives amidst flocks of sheep; but never does a morsel of mutton enter their lips. A labouring man told me, at Binley, that he had not tasted meat since harvest; and his looks vouched for the statement. Let the Spaniards come and look at this poor, shotten-herring of a creature; and then let them estimate what is due to a set of “enlightening” and loan-making “patriots.” Old Fortescue says that “the English are clothed in good woollens throughout,” and that they have “plenty of flesh of all sorts to eat.” Yes; but at this time the nation was not mortgaged. The “enlightening” patriots would have made Spain what England now is. The people must never more, after a few years, have tasted mutton, though living surrounded with flocks of sheep.
Easton, near Winchester,
Wednesday Evening, 9th Nov.
I intended to go from Uphusband to Stonehenge, thence to Old Sarum, and thence through the New Forest, to Southampton and Botley, and thence across into Sussex, to see Up-Park and Cowdry House. But, then, there must be no loss of time: I must adhere to a certain route as strictly as a regiment on a march. I had written the route: and Laverstock, after seeing Stonehenge and Old Sarum, was to be the resting-place of yesterday (Tuesday); but when it came, it brought rain with it after a white frost on Monday. It was likely to rain again to-day. It became necessary to change the route, as I must get to London by a certain day; and as the first day, on the new route, brought us here.
I had been three times at Uphusband before, and had, as my readers will, perhaps, recollect, described the bourn here, or the brook. It has, in general, no water at all in it from August to March. There is the bed of a little river; but no water. In March, or thereabouts, the water begins to boil up in thousands upon thousands of places, in the little narrow meadows, just above the village; that is to say a little higher up the valley. When the chalk hills are full; when the chalk will hold no more water; then it comes out at the lowest spots near these immense hills and becomes a rivulet first, and then a river. But until this visit to Uphusband (or Hurstbourne Tarrant, as the map calls it), little did I imagine that this rivulet, dry half the year, was the head of the river Teste, which, after passing through Stockbridge and Rumsey, falls into the sea near Southampton.
We had to follow the bed of this river to Bourne; but there the water begins to appear; and it runs all the year long about a mile lower down. Here it crosses Lord Portsmouth’s out-park, and our road took us the same way to the village called Down Husband, the scene (as the broad-sheet tells us) of so many of that Noble Lord’s ringing and cart-driving exploits. Here we crossed the London and Andover road, and leaving Andover to our right and Whitchurch to our left, we came on to Long Parish, where, crossing the water, we came up again on that high country which continues all across to Winchester. After passing Bullington, Sutton, and Wonston, we veered away from Stoke-Charity, and came across the fields to the high down, whence you see Winchester, or rather the Cathedral; for at this distance you can distinguish nothing else clearly.