Letters from England, Volume 1 (of 3) — Edition Insights

om is more economical, and better.

This blunder has been applied to the French word _eau_. Which ever may be original, it certainly ought not to be palmed upon an Englishman.—TR.

Falmouth stands on the western side of the bay, and consists of one long narrow street which exhibits no favourable specimen either of the boasted cleanliness or wealth of the English towns. The wealthier merchants dwell a little out of the town upon the shore, or on the opposite side of the bay at a little place called Flushing. The harbour, which is very fine, is commanded by the castle of Pendennis; near its mouth there is a single rock, on which a pole is erected because it is covered at high tide. A madman not many years ago carried his wife here at low water, landed her on the rock, and rowed away in sport; nor did he return till her danger as well as fear had become extreme.

Some time since the priest of this place was applied to to bury a certain person from the adjoining country. “Why, John,” said he to the sexton, “we buried this man a dozen years ago:” and in fact it appeared on referring to the books of the church that his funeral had been registered ten years back. He had been bed-ridden and in a state of dotage during all that time; and his heirs had made a mock burial, to avoid certain legal forms and expenses which would else have been necessary to enable them to receive and dispose of his rents. I was also told another anecdote of an inhabitant of this town, not unworthy of a stoic:—His house was on fire; it contained his whole property; and when he found it was in vain to attempt saving any thing, he went upon the nearest hill and made a drawing of the conflagration:—an admirable instance of English phlegm!

The perpetual stir and bustle in this inn is as surprising as it is wearisome. Doors opening and shutting, bells ringing, voices calling to the waiter from every quarter, while he cries “Coming,” to one room, and hurries away to another. Every body is in a hurry here; either they are going off in the packets, and are hastening their preparations to embark; or they have just arrived, and are impatient to be on the road homeward. Every now-and-then a carriage rattles up to the door with a rapidity which makes the very house shake. The man who cleans the boots is running in one direction, the barber with his powder-bag in another; here goes the barber’s boy with his hot water and razors; there comes the clean linen from the washer-woman; and the hall is full of porters and sailors bringing in luggage, or bearing it away;—now you hear a horn blow because the post is coming in, and in the middle of the night you are awakened by another because it is going out. Nothing is done in England without a noise, and yet noise is the only thing they forget in the bill!

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_Mode of Travelling.—Penryn.—Truro.—Dreariness of the Country.—Bodmin.—Earth-Coal the common Fuel.—Launceston.—Excellence of the Inns and Roads.—Okehampton.—Exeter._

Early in the morning our chaise was at the door, a four-wheeled carriage which conveniently carries three persons. It has glass in front and at the sides, instead of being closed with curtains, so that you at once see the country and are sheltered from the weather. Two horses drew us at the rate of a league and a half in the hour;—such is the rapidity with which the English travel. Half a league from Falmouth is the little town of Penryn, whose ill-built and narrow streets seem to have been contrived to make as many acute angles in the road, and take the traveller up and down as many steep declivities as possible in a given distance. In two hours we reached Truro, where we breakfasted: this meal is completely spoilt by the abominable bitterness of the bread, to which I shall not soon be able to reconcile myself. The town is clean and opulent; its main street broad, with superb shops, and a little gutter stream running through it. All the shops have windows to them; the climate is so inclement that it would be impossible to live without them. J— showed me where some traveller had left the expression of his impatience written upon the wainscot with a pencil—“Thanks to the Gods another stage is past”—for all travellers are in haste here, either on their way home, or to be in time for the packet. When we proceeded the day had become dark and overclouded;—quite English weather:—I could scarcely keep myself warm in my cloak: the trees have hardly a tinge of green, though it is now so late in April. Every thing has a coarse and cold appearance: the heath looks nipt in its growth, and the hedge-plants are all mean and insignificant: nettles, and thistles, and thorns, instead of the aloe, and the acanthus, and the arbutus, and the vine. We soon entered upon a track as dreary as any in Estremadura; mile after mile the road lay straight before us; up and down long hills, whose heights only served to show how extensive was the waste.

Mitchel-Dean, the next place to which we came, is as miserable as any of our most decayed towns; it is what they call a rotten borough: that is, it has the privilege of returning two members to parliament, who purchase the votes of their constituents, and the place has no other trade:—it has indeed a very rotten appearance. Even the poorest houses in this country are glazed: this, however, proves rather the inclemency of the climate than the wealth of the people. Our second stage was to a single house called the Indian Queens, which is rather a post-house than an inn. These places are not distinguished by a bush, though that was once the custom here also, but by a large painting swung from a sort of gallows before the door, or nailed above it, and the house takes its name from the sign. Lambs, horses, bulls, and stags, are common; sometimes they have red lions, green dragons, or blue boars, or the head of the king or queen, or the arms of the nearest nobleman. One inconvenience attends their mode of travelling, which is, that at every stage the chaise is changed, and of course there is the trouble of removing all the baggage.

The same dreary country still lay before us; on the right there was a wild rock rising at once from the plain, with a ruin upon its summit. Nothing can be more desolate than the appearance of this province, where most part of the inhabitants live in the mines. “I never see the greater part of my parishioners,” said a clergyman here, “till they come up to be buried.” We dined at Bodmin, an old town which was once the chief seat of religion in the district, but has materially suffered since the schism; ill-built, yet not worse built than situated, being shadowed by a hill to the south; and to complete the list of ill contrivances, their water is brought through the common burial-place. They burn earth-coal every where; it is a black shining stone, very brittle, which kindles slowly, making much smoke, and much ashes: but as all the houses are built with chimneys, it is neither unwholesome nor disagreeable. An Englishman’s delight is to stir the fire; and I believe I shall soon acquire this part of their manners, as a means of self-defence against their raw and chilly atmosphere. The hearth is furnished with a round bar to move the coals, a sort of forceps to arrange them, and a small shovel for the cinders; all of iron, and so shaped and polished as to be ornamental. Besides these, there is what they call the fender, which is a little moveable barrier, either of brass or polished steel, or sometimes of wire painted green and capt with brass, to prevent the live embers from falling upon the floor. The grates which confine the fire are often very costly and beautiful, every thing being designed to display the wealth of the people; even the bars, though they are necessarily blackened every day by the smoke, are regularly brightened in the morning, and this work is performed by women. In good houses the chimneys have a marble frontal, upon the top of which vases of alabaster or spar, mandarins from China, flower-stands, or other ornaments, are arranged.

After dinner we proceeded to Launceston; the country improved upon us, and the situation of the place as we approached, standing upon a hill, with the ruins of the castle which had once commanded it, reminded me of our Moorish towns. We arrived just as the evening was closing; our chaise wheeled under the gateway with a clangor that made the roof ring; the waiter was at the door in an instant; by the time we could let down the glass, he had opened the door and let the steps down. We were shown into a comfortable room; lights were brought, the twilight shut out, the curtains let down, the fire replenished. Instead of oil, they burn candles made of tallow, which in this climate is not offensive; wax is so dear that it is used by only the highest ranks.

Here we have taken our tea; and in the interval between that and supper, J— is reading the newspaper, and I am minuting down the recollections of the day. What a country for travelling is this! such rapidity on the road! such accommodations at the resting-places! We have advanced fourteen leagues to-day without fatigue or exertion. When we arrive at the inn there is no apprehension lest the apartments should be pre-occupied; we are not liable to any unpleasant company; we have not to send abroad to purchase wine and seek for provisions; every thing is ready; the larder stored, the fire burning, the beds prepared; and the people of the house, instead of idly looking on, or altogether neglecting us, are asking our orders and solicitous to please. I no longer wonder at the ill-humour and fastidiousness of Englishmen in Spain.

Launceston castle was formerly used as a state prison. There were lazar-houses here and at Bodmin when leprosy was common in England. They attributed this disease to the habit of eating fish, and especially the livers; the fresher they were the more unwholesome they were thought. Whatever has been the cause, whether change of diet, or change of dress, it has totally disappeared.

The Tamar, a clear shallow and rapid stream, flows by Launceston, and divides Cornwall from Devonshire. The mountainous character of the river, the situation of the town rising behind it, its ancient appearance, and its castle towering above all, made so Spanish a scene, that perhaps it pleased me the more for the resemblance; and I would willingly for a while have exchanged the chaise for a mule, that I might have loitered to enjoy it at leisure. The English mode of travelling is excellently adapted for every thing, except for seeing the country.

We met a stage-waggon, the vehicle in which baggage is transported, for sumpter-beasts are not in use. I could not imagine what this could be; a huge carriage upon four wheels of prodigious breadth, very wide and very long, and arched over with cloth, like a bower, at a considerable height: this monstrous machine was drawn by eight large horses, whose neck-bells were heard far off as they approached; the carrier walked beside them, with a long whip upon his shoulder, as tall again as himself, which he sometimes cracked in the air, seeming to have no occasion to exercise it in any other manner; his dress was different from any that I had yet seen, it was a sort of tunic of coarse linen, and is peculiar to this class of men. Here would have been an adventure for Don Quixote! Carrying is here a very considerable trade: these waggons are day and night upon their way, and are oddly enough called flying waggons, though of all machines they travel the slowest, slower than even a travelling funeral. The breadth of the wheels is regulated by law, on account of the roads, to which great attention is paid, and which are deservedly esteemed objects of national importance. At certain distances gates are erected and toll-houses beside them, where a regular tax is paid for every kind of conveyance in proportion to the number of horses and wheels; horsemen and cattle also are subject to this duty. These gates are rented by auction; they are few or frequent, as the nature of the soil occasions more or less expense in repairs: no tax can be levied more fairly, and no public money is more fairly applied. Another useful peculiarity here is, that where the roads cross or branch off a directing post is set up, which might sometimes be mistaken for a cross, were it in a Catholic country. The distances are measured by the mile, which is the fourth of a league, and stones to mark them are set by the way-side, though they are often too much defaced by time or by mischievous travellers to be of any use.

The dresses of the peasantry are far less interesting than they are in our own land; they are neither gay in colour, nor graceful in shape; that of the men differs little in make from what the higher orders wear. I have seen no goats; they are not common, for neither their flesh nor their milk is in use; the people seem not to know how excellent the milk is, and how excellent a cheese may be made from it. All the sheep are white, and these also are never milked. Here are no aqueducts, no fountains by the way-side.

Okehampton, which we next came to, stands in the county of Devonshire; here also is a ruined castle on its hill, beautifully ivyed, and standing above a delightful stream. There was in our room a series of prints, which, as they represented a sport peculiar to England, interested me much: it was the hunting the hare. The first displayed the sportsmen assembled on horseback, and the dogs searching the cover: in the second they were in chace, men and dogs full speed, horse and horseman together leaping over a high gate,—a thing which I thought impossible, but J— assured me that it was commonly practised in this perilous amusement: in the third they were at fault, while the poor hare was stealing away at a distance: the last was the death of the hare, the huntsman holding her up and winding his horn, while the dogs are leaping round him.

This province appears far more fertile than the one we have quitted; the wealth of which lies under ground. The beauty of the country is much injured by inclosures, which intercept the view, or cut it into patches; it is not, however, quite fair to judge of them in their present leafless state. The road was very hilly, a thick small rain came on, and prevented us from seeing any thing. Wet as is the climate of the whole island, these two western provinces are particularly subject to rain; for they run out between the English and Bristol channels, like a peninsula; in other respects their climate is better, the temperature being considerably warmer; so that sickly persons are sent to winter here upon the south coast. Much cyder is made here: it is a far pleasanter liquor than their beer, and may indeed be considered as an excellent beverage by a people to whom nature has denied the grape. I ought, perhaps, to say, that it is even better than our country wines; but what we drank was generous cyder, and at a price exceeding that which generous wine bears with us; so that the advantage is still ours.

We only stopped to change chaises at our next stage; the inn was not inviting in its appearance, and we had resolved to reach Exeter to a late dinner. There were two busts in porcelain upon the chimney-piece, one of Buonaparte, the other of John Wesley, the founder of a numerous sect in this land of schismatics; and between them a whole-length figure of Shakespeare, their famous dramatist. When J— had explained them to me, I asked him which of the three worthies was the most popular. “Perhaps,” said he, “the Corsican just at present; but his is a transient popularity; he is only the first political actor of the day, and, like all other stage-players, must one day give way to his successors, as his predecessors have given way to him. Moreover, he is rather notorious than popular; the king of Prussia was a favourite with the people, and they hung up his picture as an alehouse sign, as they had done prince Eugene before him, and many a fellow gets drunk under them still; but no one will set up Buonaparte’s head as an invitation. Wesley, on the contrary, is a saint with his followers, and indeed with almost all the lower classes. As for Shakespeare, these people know nothing of him but his name; he is famous in the strictest sense of the word, and his fame will last as long as the English language; which by God’s blessing will be as long as the habitable world itself.” “He is your saint!” said I, smiling at the warmth with which he spake.

At length we crossed the river Exe by a respectable bridge, and immediately entered the city of Exeter, and drove up a long street to an inn as large as a large convent. Is it possible, I asked, that this immense house can ever be filled by travellers? He told me in reply, that there were two other inns in the city nearly as large, besides many smaller ones; and yet, that the last time he passed through Exeter, they were obliged to procure a bed for him in a private dwelling, not having one unoccupied in the house.

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_Exeter Cathedral and Public Walk.—Libraries.—Honiton.—Dangers of English Travelling, and Cruelty with which it is attended.—Axminster.—Bridport._

If the outside of this New London Inn, as it is called, surprised me, I was far more surprised at the interior. Excellent as the houses appeared at which we had already halted, they were mean and insignificant compared with this. There was a sofa in our apartment, and the sideboard was set forth with china and plate. Surely, however, these articles of luxury are misplaced, as they are not in the slightest degree necessary to the accommodation of a traveller, and must be considered in his bill.

Exeter is an ancient city, and has been so slow in adopting modern improvements that it has the unsavoury odour of Lisbon. One great street runs through the city from east to west; the rest consists of dirty lanes. As you cross the bridge, you look down upon a part of the town below, intersected by little channels of water. The cathedral is a fine object from those situations where both towers are seen, and only half the body of the building, rising above the city. It cannot be compared with Seville, or Cordova, or Burgos; yet certainly it is a noble pile. Even the heretics confess that the arches, and arched windows, and avenues of columns, the old monuments, the painted altar, and the coloured glass, impress them with a feeling favourable to religion. For myself, I felt that I stood upon ground, which, desecrated as it was, had once been holy.