This neighbourhood has witnessed some pretty thumping transfers from the Normans. Holland, one of Baring’s partners, or clerks, has recently bought an estate of Lord Somers, called Dumbleton, for, it is said, about eighty thousand pounds. Another estate of the same Lord, called Strensham, has been bought by a Brummigeham Banker of the name of Taylor, for, it is said, seventy thousand pounds. “Eastnor Castle,” just over the Malvern Hills, is still building, and Lord Eastnor lives at that pretty little warm and snug place, the priory of Reigate, in Surrey, and close by the not less snug little borough of the same name. Memorandum. When we were petitioning for reform, in 1817, my Lord Somers wrote and published a pamphlet, under his own name, condemning our conduct and our principles, and insisting that we, if let alone, should produce “a revolution, and endanger all property!” The Barings are adding field to field and tract to tract in Herefordshire; and, as to the Ricardos, they seem to be animated with the same laudable spirit. This Osmond Ricardo has a park at one of his estates, called Broomsborough, and that park has a new porter’s lodge, upon which there is a span new cross as large as life! Aye, big enough and long enough to crucify a man upon! I had never seen such an one before; and I know not what sort of thought it was that seized me at the moment; but, though my horse is but a clumsy goer, I verily believe I got away from it at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour. My companion, who is always upon the look-out for cross-ditches, or pieces of timber, on the road-side, to fill up the time of which my jog-trot gives him so wearisome a surplus, seemed delighted at this my new pace; and, I dare say he has wondered ever since what should have given me wings just for that once and that once only.
Worcester,
Tuesday, 26th Sept.
Mr. Price rode with us to this city, which is one of the cleanest, neatest, and handsomest towns I ever saw: indeed, I do not recollect to have seen any one equal to it. The cathedral is, indeed, a poor thing, compared with any of the others, except that of Hereford; and I have seen them all but those of Carlisle, Durham, York, Lincoln, Chester, and Peterborough; but the town is, I think, the very best I ever saw; and which is, indeed, the greatest of all recommendations, the people are, upon the whole, the most suitably dressed and most decent looking people. The town is precisely in character with the beautiful and rich country, in the midst of which it lies. Everything you see gives you the idea of real, solid wealth; aye! and thus it was, too, before, long before, Pitt, and even long before “good Queen Bess” and her military law and her Protestant racks, were ever heard or dreamed of.
At Worcester, as everywhere else, I find a group of cordial and sensible friends, at the house of one of whom, Mr. George Brooke, I have just spent a most pleasant evening, in company with several gentlemen, whom he had had the goodness to invite to meet me. I here learned a fact, which I must put upon record before it escape my memory. Some few years ago (about seven, perhaps), at the public sale by auction of the goods of a then recently deceased Attorney of the name of Hyde, in this city, there were, amongst the goods to be sold, the portraits of Pitt, Burdett, and Paine, all framed and glazed. Pitt, with hard driving and very lofty praises, fetched fifteen shillings; Burdett fetched twenty-seven shillings. Paine was, in great haste, knocked down at five pounds; and my informant was convinced, that the lucky purchaser might have had fifteen pounds for it. I hear Colonel Davies spoken of here with great approbation: he will soon have an opportunity of showing us whether he deserve it.
The hop-picking and bagging is over here. The crop, as in the other hop-countries, has been very great, and the quality as good as ever was known. The average price appears to be about 75s. the hundred weight. The reader (if he do not belong to a hop-country) should be told, that hop-planters, and even all their neighbours, are, as hop-ward, mad, though the most sane and reasonable people as to all other matters. They are ten times more jealous upon this score than men ever are of their wives; aye, and than they are of their mistresses, which is going a great deal farther. I, who am a Farnham man, was well aware of this foible; and therefore, when a gentleman told me, that he would not brew with Farnham hops, if he could have them as a gift, I took special care not to ask him how it came to pass, that the Farnham hops always sold at about double the price of the Worcester; but, if he had said the same thing to any other Farnham man that I ever saw, I should have preferred being absent from the spot: the hops are bitter, but nothing is their bitterness compared to the language that my townsman would have put forth.
This city, or this neighbourhood, at least, being the birth-place of what I have called, the “Little-Shilling project,” and Messrs. Atwood and Spooner being the originators of the project, and the project having been adopted by Mr. Western, and having been by him now again recently urged upon the Ministers, in a Letter to Lord Liverpool, and it being possible that some worthy persons may be misled, and even ruined, by the confident assertions and the pertinacity of the projectors; this being the case, and I having half an hour to spare, will here endeavour to show, in as few words as I can, that this project, if put into execution, would produce injustice the most crying that the world ever heard of, and would, in the present state of things, infallibly lead to a violent revolution. The project is to “lower the standard,” as they call it; that is to say, to make a sovereign pass for more than 20s. In what degree they would reduce the standard they do not say; but a vile pamphlet writer, whose name is Crutwell, and who is a beneficed parson, and who has most foully abused me, because I laugh at the project, says that he would reduce it one half; that is to say, that he would make a sovereign pass for two pounds. Well, then, let us, for plainness’ sake, suppose that the present sovereign is, all at once, to pass for two pounds. What will the consequences be? Why, here is a parson, who receives his tithes in kind and whose tithes are, we will suppose, a thousand bushels of wheat in a year, on an average; and he owes a thousand pounds to somebody. He will pay his debt with 500 sovereigns, and he will still receive his thousand bushels of wheat a year! I let a farm for 100l. a year, by the year; and I have a mortgage of 2000l. upon it, the interest just taking away the rent. Pass the project, and then I, of course, raise my rent to 200l. a year, and I still pay the mortgagee 100l. a year! What can be plainer than this? But, the Banker’s is the fine case. I deposit with a banker a thousand whole sovereigns to-day. Pass the project to-morrow, and the banker pays me my deposit with a thousand half sovereigns! If, indeed, you could double the quantity of corn and meat and all goods by the same Act of Parliament, then, all would be right; but that quantity will remain what it was before you passed the project; and, of course, the money being doubled in nominal amount, the price of the goods would be doubled. There needs not another word upon the subject; and whatever may be the national inference respecting the intellects of Messrs. Atwood and Spooner, I must say, that I do most sincerely believe, that there is not one of my readers, who will not feel astonishment, that any men, having the reputation of men of sound mind, should not clearly see, that such a project must almost instantly produce a revolution of the most dreadful character.
Stanford Park,
Wednesday, 27th Sept. (Morning).
In a letter which I received from Sir Thomas Winnington (one of the Members for this county), last year, he was good enough to request that I would call upon him, if I ever came into Worcestershire, which I told him I would do; and accordingly here we are in his house, situated, certainly, in one of the finest spots in all England. We left Worcester yesterday about ten o’clock, crossed the Severn, which runs close by the town, and came on to this place, which lies in a north-western direction from Worcester, at 14 miles distance from that city, and at about six from the borders of Shropshire. About four miles back we passed by the park and through the estate of Lord Foley, to whom is due the praise of being a most indefatigable and successful planter of trees. He seems to have taken uncommon pains in the execution of this work; and he has the merit of disinterestedness, the trees being chiefly oaks, which he is sure he can never see grow to timber. We crossed the Teme River just before we got here. Sir Thomas was out shooting; but he soon came home, and gave us a very polite reception. I had time, yesterday, to see the place, to look at trees, and the like, and I wished to get away early this morning; but, being prevailed on to stay to breakfast, here I am, at six o’clock in the morning, in one of the best and best-stocked private libraries that I ever saw; and, what is more, the owner, from what passed yesterday, when he brought me hither, convinced me that he was acquainted with the insides of the books. I asked, and shall ask, no questions about who got these books together; but the collection is such as, I am sure, I never saw before in a private house.
The house and stables and courts are such as they ought to be for the great estate that surrounds them; and the park is everything that is beautiful. On one side of the house, looking over a fine piece of water, you see a distant valley, opening between lofty hills: on another side the ground descends a little at first, then goes gently rising for a while, and then rapidly, to the distance of a mile perhaps, where it is crowned with trees in irregular patches, or groups, single and most magnificent trees being scattered all over the whole of the park; on another side, there rise up beautiful little hills, some in the form of barrows on the downs, only forty or a hundred times as large, one or two with no trees on them, and others topped with trees; but, on one of these little hills, and some yards higher than the lofty trees which are on this little hill, you see rising up the tower of the parish church, which hill is, I think, taken all together, amongst the most delightful objects that I ever beheld.