We left Old Hall (where we always breakfasted by candle-light) this morning after breakfast; returned to Bollitree; took the Hereford coach as it passed about noon; and came in it through Gloucester, Cheltenham, Northleach, Burford, Whitney, and on to this city, where we arrived about ten o’clock. I could not leave Herefordshire without bringing with me the most pleasing impressions. It is not for one to descend to particulars in characterising one’s personal friends; and, therefore, I will content myself with saying, that the treatment I met with in this beautiful county, where I saw not one single face that I had, to my knowledge, ever seen before, was much more than sufficient to compensate to me, personally, for all the atrocious calumnies, which, for twenty years, I have had to endure; but where is my country, a great part of the present hideous sufferings of which will, by every reflecting mind, be easily traced to these calumnies, which have been made the ground, or pretext, for rejecting that counsel by listening to which those sufferings would have been prevented; where is my country to find a compensation?——At Gloucester (as there were no meals on the road) we furnished ourselves with nuts and apples, which, first a handful of nuts and then an apple, are, I can assure the reader, excellent and most wholesome fare. They say that nuts of all sorts are unwholesome; if they had been, I should never have written Registers, and if they were now, I should have ceased to write ere this; for, upon an average, I have eaten a pint a day since I left home. In short, I could be very well content to live on nuts, milk, and home-baked bread.——From Gloucester to Cheltenham the country is level, and the land rich and good. The fields along here are ploughed in ridges about 20 feet wide, and the angle of this species of roof is pretty nearly as sharp as that of some slated roofs of houses. There is no wet under; it is the top wet only that they aim at keeping from doing mischief.—Cheltenham is a nasty, ill-looking place, half clown and half cockney. The town is one street about a mile long; but, then, at some distance from this street, there are rows of white tenements, with green balconies, like those inhabited by the tax-eaters round London. Indeed, this place appears to be the residence of an assemblage of tax-eaters. These vermin shift about between London, Cheltenham, Bath, Bognor, Brighton, Tunbridge, Ramsgate, Margate, Worthing, and other spots in England, while some of them get over to France and Italy: just like those body-vermin of different sorts that are found in different parts of the tormented carcass at different hours of the day and night, and in different degrees of heat and cold.
Cheltenham is at the foot of a part of that chain of hills which form the sides of that dish which I described as resembling the vale of Gloucester. Soon after quitting this resort of the lame and the lazy, the gormandizing and guzzling, the bilious and the nervous, we proceeded on, between stone walls, over a country little better than that from Cirencester to Burlip-hill.——A very poor, dull, and uninteresting country all the way to Oxford.
Burghclere (Hants),
Sunday, 18 Nov.
We left Oxford early, and went on, through Abingdon (Berks) to Market-Ilsley. It is a saying, hereabouts, that at Oxford they make the living pay for the dead, which is precisely according to the Pitt-System. Having smarted on this account, we were afraid to eat again at an Inn; so we pushed on through Ilsley towards Newbury, breakfasting upon the residue of the nuts, aided by a new supply of apples bought from a poor man, who exhibited them in his window. Inspired, like Don Quixote, by the sight of the nuts, and recollecting the last night’s bill, I exclaimed: “Happy! thrice happy and blessed, that golden age, when men lived on the simple fruits of the earth and slaked their thirst at the pure and limpid brook! when the trees shed their leaves to form a couch for their repose, and cast their bark to furnish them with a canopy! Happy age; when no Oxford landlord charged two men, who had dropped into a common coach-passenger room, and who had swallowed three pennyworths of food, ‘four shillings for teas,’ and ‘eighteen pence for cold meat,’ ‘two shillings for moulds and fire’ in this common coach-room, and ‘five shillings for beds!’” This was a sort of grace before meat to the nuts and apples; and it had much more merit than the harangue of Don Quixote; for he, before he began upon the nuts, had stuffed himself well with goat’s flesh and wine, whereas we had absolutely fled from the breakfast-table and blazing fire at Oxford.—Upon beholding the masses of buildings at Oxford devoted to what they call “learning,” I could not help reflecting on the drones that they contain and the wasps they send forth! However, malignant as some are, the great and prevalent characteristic is folly: emptiness of head; want of talent; and one half of the fellows who are what they call educated here, are unfit to be clerks in a grocer’s or mercer’s shop.—As I looked up at what they call University Hall, I could not help reflecting that what I had written, even since I left Kensington on the 29th of October, would produce more effect, and do more good in the world, than all that had for a hundred years been written by all the members of this University, who devour, perhaps, not less than a million pounds a year, arising from property, completely at the disposal of the “Great Council of the Nation;” and I could not help exclaiming to myself: “Stand forth, ye big-wigged, ye gloriously feeding Doctors! Stand forth, ye rich of that church whose poor have had given them a hundred thousand pounds a year, not out of your riches, but out of the taxes, raised, in part, from the salt of the labouring man! Stand forth and face me, who have, from the pen of my leisure hours, sent, amongst your flocks, a hundred thousand sermons in ten months! More than you have all done for the last half century!”—I exclaimed in vain. I dare say (for it was at peep of day) that not a man of them had yet endeavoured to unclose his eyes.—In coming thro’ Abingdon (Berks) I could not help thinking of that great financier, Mr. John Maberly, by whom this place has, I believe, the honour to be represented in the Collective Wisdom of the Nation.—In the way to Ilsley we came across a part of that fine tract of land, called the Vale of Berkshire, where they grow wheat and beans, one after another, for many years together. About three miles before we reached Ilsley we came to downs, with, as is always the case, chalk under. Between Ilsley and Newbury the country is enclosed; the land middling, a stony loam; the woods and coppices frequent, and neither very good, till we came within a short distance of Newbury. In going along we saw a piece of wheat with cabbage-leaves laid all over it at the distance, perhaps, of eight or ten feet from each other. It was to catch the slugs. The slugs, which commit their depredations in the night, creep under the leaves in the morning, and by turning up the leaves you come at the slugs, and crush them, or carry them away. But besides the immense daily labour attending this, the slug, in a field sowed with wheat, has a clod to creep under at every foot, and will not go five feet to get under a cabbage-leaf. Then again, if the day be wet, the slug works by day as well as by night. It is the sun and drought that he shuns, and not the light. Therefore the only effectual way to destroy slugs is to sow lime, in dust, and not slaked. The slug is wet, he has hardly any skin, his slime is his covering; the smallest dust of hot lime kills him; and a few bushels to the acre are sufficient. You must sow the lime at dusk; for then the slugs are sure to be out. Slugs come after a crop that has long afforded a great deal of shelter from the sun; such as peas and vetches. In gardens they are nursed up by strawberry beds and by weeds, by asparagus beds, or by anything that remains for a long time to keep the summer-sun from the earth. We got about three o’clock to this nice, snug little farmhouse, and found our host, Mr. Budd, at home.
Burghclere, Monday, 19 Nov.
A thorough wet day, the only day the greater part of which I have not spent out of doors since I left home.
Burghclere, Tuesday, 20 Nov.
With Mr. Budd, we rode to-day to see the Farm of Tull, at Shalborne, in Berkshire. Mr. Budd did the same thing with Arthur Young twenty-seven years ago. It was a sort of pilgrimage; but as the distance was ten miles, we thought it best to perform it on horseback.—We passed through the parish of Highclere, where they have enclosed commons, worth, as tillage land, not one single farthing an acre, and never will and never can be. As a common it afforded a little picking for geese and asses, and in the moory parts of it, a little fuel for the labourers. But now it really can afford nothing. It will all fall to common again by degrees. This madness, this blind eagerness to gain, is now, I hope, pretty nearly over.—At East Woody we passed the house of a Mr. Goddard, which is uninhabited, he residing at Bath.—At West Woody (Berks) is the estate of Mr. Sloper, a very pretty place. A beautiful sporting country. Large fields, small woods, dry soil. What has taken place here is an instance of the workings of the system. Here is a large gentleman’s house. But the proprietor lets it (it is, just now, empty), and resides in a farmhouse and farms his own estate. Happy is the landlord who has the good sense to do this in time. This is a fine farm, and here appears to be very judicious farming. Large tracts of turnips; clean land; stubbles ploughed up early; ploughing with oxen; and a very large and singularly fine flock of sheep. Everything that you see, land, stock, implements, fences, buildings; all do credit to the owner; bespeak his sound judgment, his industry and care. All that is wanted here is the radical husbandry; because that would enable the owner to keep three times the quantity of stock. However, since I left home, I have seen but very few farms that I should prefer to that of Mr. Sloper, whom I have not the pleasure to know, and whom, indeed, I never heard of till I saw his farm. At a village (certainly named by some author) called Inkpen, we passed a neat little house and paddock, the residence of a Mr. Butler, a nephew of Dr. Butler, who died Bishop of Oxford, and whom I can remember hearing preach at Farnham in Surrey when I was a very very little boy. I have his features and his wig as clearly in my recollection as if I had seen them but yesterday; and I dare say I have not thought of Doctor Butler for forty years before to-day. The “loyal” (oh, the pious gang!) will say that my memory is good as to the face and wig, but bad as to the Doctor’s Sermons. Why, I must confess that I have no recollection of them; but, then, do I not make Sermons myself?——At about two miles from Inkpen we came to the end of our pilgrimage. The farm, which was Mr. Tull’s; where he used the first drill that ever was used; where he practised his husbandry; where he wrote that book, which does so much honour to his memory, and to which the cultivators of England owe so much; this farm is on an open and somewhat bleak spot in Berkshire, on the borders of Wiltshire, and within a very short distance of a part of Hampshire. The ground is a loam, mixed with flints, and has the chalk at no great distance beneath it. It is, therefore, free from wet; needs no water furrows; and is pretty good in its nature. The house, which has been improved by Mr. Blandy, the present proprietor, is still but a plain farmhouse. Mr. Blandy has lived here thirty years, and has brought up ten children to man’s and woman’s estate. Mr. Blandy was from home, but Mrs. Blandy received and entertained us in a very hospitable manner.—We returned, not along the low land, but along the top of the downs, and through Lord Caernarvon’s park, and got home after a very pleasant day.
Burghclere, Wednesday, 21 Nov.
We intended to have a hunt; but the foxhounds came across and rendered it impracticable. As an instance of the change which rural customs have undergone since the hellish paper-system has been so furiously at work, I need only mention the fact, that, forty years ago, there were five packs of foxhounds and ten packs of harriers kept within ten miles of Newbury; and that now there is one of the former (kept, too, by subscription) and none of the latter, except the few couple of dogs kept by Mr. Budd! “So much the better,” says the shallow fool, who cannot duly estimate the difference between a resident native gentry, attached to the soil, known to every farmer and labourer from their childhood, frequently mixing with them in those pursuits where all artificial distinctions are lost, practicing hospitality without ceremony, from habit and not on calculation; and a gentry, only now-and-then residing at all, having no relish for country-delights, foreign in their manners, distant and haughty in their behaviour, looking to the soil only for its rents, viewing it as a mere object of speculation, unacquainted with its cultivators, despising them and their pursuits, and relying for influence, not upon the good will of the vicinage, but upon the dread of their power. The war and paper-system has brought in nabobs, negro-drivers, generals, admirals, governors, commissaries, contractors, pensioners, sinecurists, commissioners, loan-jobbers, lottery-dealers, bankers, stock-jobbers; not to mention the long and black list in gowns and three-tailed wigs. You can see but few good houses not in possession of one or the other of these. These, with the Parsons, are now the magistrates. Some of the consequences are before us; but they have not all yet arrived. A taxation that sucks up fifty millions a year must produce a new set of proprietors every twenty years or less; and the proprietors, while they last, can be little better than tax-collectors to the government, and scourgers of the people.—I must not quit Burghclere without noticing Mr. Budd’s radical Swedes and other things. His is but miniature farming; but it is very good, and very interesting. Some time in May, he drilled a piece of Swedes on four feet ridges. The fly took them off. He had cabbage and mangel-wurzel plants to put in their stead. Unwilling to turn back the ridges, and thereby bring the dung to the top, he planted the cabbages and mangel-wurzel on the ridges where the Swedes had been drilled. This was done in June. Late in July, his neighbour, a farmer Hulbert, had a field of Swedes that he was hoeing. Mr. Budd now put some manure in the furrows between the ridges, and ploughed a furrow over it from each ridge. On this he planted Swedes, taken from farmer Hulbert’s field. Thus his plantation consisted of rows of plants two feet apart. The result is a prodigious crop. Of the mangel-wurzel (greens and all) he has not less than twenty tons to the acre. He can scarcely have less of the cabbages, some of which are green savoys as fine as I ever saw. And of the Swedes, many of which weigh from five to nine pounds, he certainly has more than twenty tons to the acre. So that here is a crop of, at the very least, forty tons to the acre. This piece is not much more than half an acre; but he will, perhaps, not find so much cattle food upon any four acres in the county. He is, and long has been, feeding four milch cows, large, fine, and in fine condition, upon cabbages sometimes, and sometimes on mangel-wurzel leaves. The butter is excellent. Not the smallest degree of bitterness or bad taste of any sort. Fine colour and fine taste. And here, upon not three quarters of an acre of ground, he has, if he manage the thing well, enough food for these four cows to the month of May! Can any system of husbandry equal this? What would he do with these cows, if he had not this crop? He could not keep one of them, except on hay. And he owes all this crop to transplanting. He thinks that the transplanting, fetching the Swede plants and all, might cost him ten or twelve shillings. It was done by women, who had never done such a thing before.——However, he must get in his crop before the hard weather comes; or my Lord Caernarvon’s hares will help him. They have begun already; and it is curious that they have begun on the mangel-wurzel roots. So that hares, at any rate, have set the seal of merit upon this root.