|WHEN, in 1768, the yet undistinguished the world his 'Journal of a Tour
to Corsica,' Gray wrote to Horace Walpole from Pembroke College that
the book had strangely pleased and moved him. Then, with the curious
contempt for the author which that egregious personage seems to have
inspired in so many of his contemporaries, Gray goes on: 'The pamphlet
proves what I have always maintained, that any fool may write a most
valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw
with veracity.' This is an utterance which suggests that sometimes even
the excellent critic Mr. Gray, like the Sage of Gough Square, 'talked
James Boswell of Auchinleck gave to laxly.' At all events this
particular example scarcely illustrates his position. There was more
than mere veracity in Boswell's method. Conscious or unconscious, his
faculty for reproducing his impressions effectively, and his thoroughly
individual treatment of his material, are far more nearly akin to genius
than folly. Nor could his success be said to be a matter of chance,
since on two subsequent occasions--in the 'Tour to the Hebrides' and
the 'Life of Johnson'--he not only repeated that success, but carried
further towards perfection those fortunate characteristics which he
had exhibited at first. Walpole, if we may trust the title-page of
the 'little lounging miscellany' known as 'Walpoliana,' reported his
friend's dictum with greater moderation. 'Mr. Gray the poet has often
observed to me, that, if any person were to form a Book of what he had
seen and heard himself, it must, in whatever hands, prove a most useful
and entertaining one.' As a generalisation, this leaves nothing to be
desired. That the unaffected record of ordinary experiences,
'honestly set down,' is seldom without its distinctive charm, needs no
demonstration; and when lapse of time has added its grace of remoteness,
the charm is heightened. These considerations must serve as our excuse
for recalling a half-forgotten 'pamphlet'--as Gray would have styled
it--which points the moral of his amended aphorism far better than
Boswell's 'Tour.'
The narrative of Charles P. Moritz's 'Travels, chiefly on Foot, through
several Parts of England,' belongs to 1782. It was first published at
Berlin in 1783, and the earliest English version is dated 1795. The
second edition (now before us) came two years later, and other issues
are occasionally met with in booksellers' catalogues; besides which,
John Pinkerton, the compiler of the 'Walpoliana' above mentioned,
included the book in the second volume of his 'Collections of Voyages,'
et.c., and Mayor also reprinted it in vol. ix. of his 'British Tourist.'
*
* It is also included, with some omissions, in Cassell's
excellent 'National Library.'
The English translator was a 'very young lady,' said to be the daughter
of an unidentified personage referred to by the author: the editor, who,
in a copious preface, testifies, among other things, to the favourable
reception of the work in Berlin and Germany generally, remains
anonymous. Moritz himself, the writer of the volume, was a young
Prussian clergyman, enthusiastic about England and things English, who
came among us 'to draw Miltonic air' (in Gay's phrase), and to read his
beloved 'Paradise Lost' in the very land of its conception. He stayed
exactly seven weeks in this country, three of which he spent in London,
the rest being occupied by visits to Oxford, Birmingham, the Peak, and
elsewhere. What he sees, and what he admires (and luckily for us he
admires a great deal), he describes in letters to one Frederic Gedike, a
professorial friend at Berlin.
His first communication, dated 31st May, depicts his progress up the
Thames, which he regards as greatly surpassing even 'the charming banks
of the _Elbe_.' Then he disembarks near Hartford, whence, with two
companions, he posts to London, behind a round-hatted postilion 'with a
nosegay in his bosom.' He is delighted with the first view he gets of an
English soldier, 'in his red uniform, his hair cut short and combed back
on his forehead, so as to afford a full view of his fine broad manly
face.' He is interested also to see two boys engaged in the national
pastime of boxing; and he marvels at the huge gateway-like sign-posts
of the village inns. Passing over Westminster Bridge, he does not, like
Wordsworth, burst into a sonnet, but he is impressed (as who would not
be!) by that unequalled _coup d'oil_. 'The prospect from this bridge
alone,' he says, 'seems to afford one the epitome of a journey, or a
voyage in miniature, as containing something of everything that most
usually occurs on a journey.' Presently, a little awed by the prodigious
greatness and gloom of the houses (which remind him of Leipzig), he
takes lodgings in George Street, Strand, with a tailor's widow, not very
far, as he is pleased to discover, from that Adelphi Terrace where once
'lived the renowned _Garrick_.' To his simple tastes his apartments,
with their leather-covered chairs, carpeted floors and mahogany tables,
have an air of splendour. 'I may do just as I please,' he says, 'and
keep my own tea, coffee, bread and butter, for which purpose [and here
comes a charming touch of guilelessness!] my landlady has given me a
cupboard in my room, which locks up.' With one of his landlady's sons
for guide, he makes the tour of St. James's Park (where you may buy milk
warm from the cow), and he experiences for the first time 'the exquisite
pleasure of mixing freely with a concourse of people, who are for the
most part well dressed and handsome.' His optimism finds a further
gratification in the 'sweet security' (the expression is not his,
but Lamb's) which is afforded 'from the prodigious crowd of carts and
coaches,' by the footways on either side of the streets; and he explains
to his 'dearest Gedike' the mysteries of giving the wall. He thinks
London better lighted than Berlin (which implies little short of
Cimmerian darkness in that centre of civilization!), and he waxes
sorrowful over the general evidence of dram-drinking and the sale of
spirituous liquors. 'In the late riots [i.e. the Gordon Riots of 1780],
which even yet are hardly quite subsided, and which are still the
general topic of conversation, more people have been found dead near
empty brandy-casks in the streets, than were killed by the musket-balls
of regiments, that were called in.'
Another thing which strikes him as foreign to his experience is the
insensibility of the crowd to funerals. 'The people seem to pay as
little attention to such a procession, as if a hay-cart were driving
past.' Among more pleasurable novelties, are the English custom of
sleeping without an eiderdown, and the insular institution of 'buttered
toast,' which, incredible as it may sound, appears to have been still an
unknown luxury in the land of Werther. *
* Another of his remarks is of special interest in our day:--
'That same influenza, which I left at Berlin, I have had the
hard fortune again to find here; and many people die of it'
(the italics are ours). Elsewhere he says that the Prussian
quack Katterfelto--Cowper's=
```'Katerfelto, with his hair on end.
```At his own wonders wondering for his bread,'=
whose advertisements were then in every paper, attributed
the epidemic to a minute insect, against which, of course,
he professed to protect his patients. Walpole's
correspondence contains references to the same visitation.
It was, he writes, 'universal,' but not 'dangerous or
lasting.' 'The strangest part of it,' he tells Mann in June,
'is, that, though of very short duration, it has left a
weakness or lassitude, of which people find it very
difficult to recover.'
On the second Sunday after his arrival he preaches at the German Church
on Ludgate Hill for the pastor, the Rev. Mr. Wendeborn, who resides
'in a philosophical, but not unimproving retirement' at chambers in New
Inn,--and he visits the Prussian Ambassador, Count Lucy, with whom, over
a 'dish of coffee,' he has a learned argument upon the pending dispute
'about the _tacismus_ or _stacismus_.' Then he pays à visit to Vauxhall.
Comparing great things with small, he straightway traces certain
superficial resemblances between the Surrey Paradise and the similar
resort at Berlin,--resemblances' which are enforced by his speedy
discovery of that chiefest glory of the English gardens, Roubiliac's
statue of Handel. The Gothic orchestra, and the painted ruin's at the
end of the walks (sometimes used by flippant playwrights as similes for
beauty in decay) also come in for a share of his admiration; and he is
particularly impressed by Hayman's pictures in the Rotunda. 'You here,'
he adds, speaking of this last, 'find the busts of the best English
authors, placed all round on the sides.
Thus a Briton again meets with his Shakespeare, Locke, Milton, and
Dryden in the public places of his amusements; and there also reveres
their memory.' He finds further confirmation of this honoured position
of letters in the popularity of the native classics as compared with
those of Germany, 'which in general are read only by the learned; or, at
most, by the middle class of people. The English national authors are
in all hands, and read by all people, of which the innumerable editions
they have gone through, are a sufficient proof.' In Germany 'since
Gellert [of the Fables], there has as yet been no poet's name familiar
to the people.' But in England even his landlady studies her 'Paradise
Lost,' and indeed by her own account won the affections of her husband
(now deceased) 'because she read Milton with such proper emphasis:'
Another institution that delights him is the second-hand bookseller,
at whose movable stall you may buy odd volumes 'so low as a penny; nay,
even sometimes for an half-penny a piece.' Of one of these 'itinerant
antiquaries' he buys the 'Vicar of Wakefield' in two volumes for
sixpence.
After Vauxhall follows, as a matter of course, a visit to the equally
popular Ranelagh. Like most people, the traveller had expected it to
resemble its rival, and until he actually entered the Great Room, was
grievously disappointed. 'But,' he continues, 'it is impossible to
describe, or indeed to conceive, the effect it had on me, when, coming
out of the gloom of the garden, I suddenly entered a round building,
illuminated by many hundred lamps, the splendour and beauty of which
surpassed everything of the kind I had ever seen before. Everything
seemed here to be round; above, there was a gallery, divided into boxes,
and in one part of it an organ with a beautiful choir, from which issued
both instrumental and vocal music. All around, under this gallery, are
handsome painted boxes for those who wish to take refreshments. The
floor was covered with mats; in the middle of which are four high black
pillars, within which are neat fire-places for preparing tea, coffee,
and punch; and all around also there are placed tables, set out with all
kinds of refreshments. Within [he means 'without'] these four pillars,
in a kind of magic rotundo, all the _beau-monde_ of London move
perpetually round and round.' This, as may be seen by a glance at Parr's
print of 1751 after Canaletto, or the better-known plate in Stowe's
'Survey' of 1754, is a fairly faithful description of the Ranelagh of
Walpole and Chesterfield. After a modest _consommation_, which, to his
astonishment, he finds is covered by the half-crown he paid at the door,
he mounts to the upper regions. 'I now went up into the gallery, and
seated myself in one of the boxes there: and from thence, becoming,
all at once, a grave and moralizing spectator, I looked down on the
concourse of people who were still moving round and round in the fairy
circle; and then I could easily distinguish several stars, and other
orders of knighthood; French queues and bags contrasted with plain
English heads of hair, or professional wigs; old age and youth,
nobility and commonalty, all passing each other in the motley swarm. An
Englishman who joined me, during this my reverie, pointed out to me, on
my inquiring, princes, and lords with their dazzling stars; with
which they eclipsed the less brilliant part of the company.' His next
experiences are Of the House of Commons. Here he had like to have
been disappointed from his unhappy ignorance of an enlightened native
formula. Having made his way to Westminster Hall, a 'very genteel man in
black' informed him he must be introduced by a member, an announcement
which caused him to retire 'much chagrined.' Something unintelligible
was mumbled behind him about a bottle of wine, but it fell on alien
ears. As soon as he returned home, his intelligent landlady solved the
difficulty, sending him back next day with the needful _douceur_, upon
which the 'genteel man,' with much venal urbanity, handed him into a
select seat in the Strangers' Gallery. The building itself strikes him
as rather mean, and not a little resembling a chapel. But the Speaker
and the mace; the members going and coming, some cracking nuts and
eating oranges, others in their greatcoats and with boots and spurs; the
cries of 'Hear,' and 'Order,' and 'Question,' speedily absorb him.
On his first visit he is fortunate. The debate turns on the reward to
Admiral Rodney for his victory over De Grasse at Guadaloupe, and he
hears Fox, Burke, and Rigby speak. 'This same celebrated Charles Fox,'
he says, 'is a short, fat, and gross man, with a swarthy complexion, and
dark; and in general he is badly dressed. There certainly is something
Jewish in his looks. But upon the whole, he is not an ill-made nor an
ill-looking man: and there are many strong marks of sagacity and fire in
his eyes.... Burke is a well-made, tall, upright man, but looks elderly
and broken. Rigby is excessively corpulent, and has a jolly rubicund
face.'
Pastor Moritz repeated his visits to the Parliament House, frankly
confessing that he preferred this entertainment to most others; and,
indeed, it was a shilling cheaper than the pit of a theatre. When, after
his tour in the country, he came back to London, he seems at once
to have gravitated to Westminster, for he gives an account of the
discussion on the Barré pension which followed the death of Lord
Rockingham in July. He heard Fox, with great eloquence, vindicate his
resignation; he heard Horace Walpole's friend, General Conway; he heard
Burke, in a passion, insisting upon the respect of the house; he heard
the youthful Pitt, then scarcely looking more than one-and-twenty, rivet
universal attention. A little earlier he had been privileged to witness
that most English of sights, the Westminster election in Covent Garden,
with its boisterous _finale_. 'When the whole was over, the rampant
spirit of liberty, and the wild impatience of a genuine English
mob, were exhibited in perfection. In a very few minutes the whole
scaffolding, benches, and chairs, and everything else, was completely
destroyed; and the mat with which it had been covered torn into ten
thousand long strips or pieces, or strings; with which they _encircled_
or inclosed multitudes of people of all ranks. These they hurried along
with them, and everything else that came in their way, as trophies of
joy; and thus, in the midst of exultation and triumph, they paraded
through many of the most populous streets of London.'
To the British Museum he paid a flying visit of little more than an
hour, with a miscellaneous and 'personally conducted' party,--a visit
scarcely favourable to minute impressions. But of the Haymarket Theatre,
to which he went twice (Covent Garden and Drury Lane being closed
as usual for the summer months), he gives a fairly detailed account.
Foote's 'Nabob' was the play on the first night; that on the second, the
'English Merchant,' adapted by the elder Colman from the 'Ecossaise' of
Voltaire. With this latter he was already familiar in its German dress,
having seen it at Hamburg. On both occasions the performance wound up
with O'Keeffe's once-famous ballad farce of 'The Agreeable Surprise.'
That excellent bur-letta singer, John Edwin, took the part of 'Lingo'
the schoolmaster (which he had created), * to the entire satisfaction
of Moritz, who thought him, with his '_Amo, amas_, I love a lass,' etc.,
and his musical voice, 'one of the best actors of all that he had seen,'
notwithstanding that Jack Palmer (Lamb and Goldsmith's Palmer!) acted
the Nabob.
* There is a print of Edwin in this character after a
picture by Alefounder. He was also a favourite 'Croaker' in
the 'Good Natur'd Man.'
But if he was pleased with the acting, he was not equally impressed by
the audience. The ceaseless clamour of the upper gallery and the steady
hail of missiles were anything but agreeable. 'Often and often whilst I
sat here [i.e. in the pit], did a rotten orange, or pieces of the peel
of an orange, fly past me, or past some of my neighbours, and once one
of them actually hit my hat, without my daring to look round, for fear
another might then hit me on my face.' Another passage connected with
this part of the entertainment illustrates the old fashion of sending
the lackeys to keep their masters' places: 'In the boxes, quite in a
corner, sat several servants, who were said to be placed there, to keep
the seats for the families they served, till they should arrive; they
seemed to sit remarkably close and still, the reason of which, I was
told, was their apprehension of being pelted, for, if one of them dares
but to look out of the box, he is immediately saluted with a shower of
orange peel from the gallery.'
Over the descriptions of St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey we must pass
silently, in order to accompany the tourist on his road to Derbyshire,
to the 'natural curiosities' of which, after some hesitation, he felt
himself most at tracted. Equipped with a road-book, he set out by
stage-coach from the White Hart (in the Strand) for Richmond, intending
thence to pursue his journey on foot. According to his own account, he
must have travelled in just such' another vehicle as that depicted in
Hogarth's 'Country Inn-Yard,' and have shared the curiosity, so often
felt by admirers of that veracious picture, and afterwards amply
gratified in his own case, as to the method by which passengers managed
to 'fasten themselves securely on the roof.' Luckily the coach met
neither highwayman nor footpad. At Richmond he alighted, and is properly
enthusiastic, almost dithyrambic, over 'one of the first situations in
the world.' He even got up to see the sun rise from Richmond Hill, with
the usual fate of such premature adventurers, a clouded sky. Then he set
out on foot by Windsor to Oxford. But he speedily discovered that, in
a horse-riding age, a pedestrian was a person of very inferior
respectability; and though--modelling himself upon the Vicar of
Wakefield--he was careful to invite the landlords to drink with him, he
found himself generally treated with pity or contempt, which, when he
sat down under a hedge to read Milton, almost changed into a doubt of
his sanity. At most of the inns they declined to give him house-room,
though, finally, he was allowed to enter 'one of those kitchens which I
had so often read of in Fielding's fine novels,' where, just as in
those novels, presently arrives a showy post-chaise to set the servile
establishment in a bustle, although the occupants called for nothing but
two pots of beer. After a vain attempt to obtain a night's lodging at
Nuneham, he picks up a travelling companion in the shape of a young
parson, who had been preaching at Dorchester and was returning to
Oxford. His new ally takes him to the time-honoured Mitre, where he
finds a great number of clergymen, all with their gowns and bands on,
sitting round a large table, each with his pot of beer before him.' A
not very edifying theological discussion ensues, which is too long
to quote, and poor Parson Moritz is so well entertained that he has a
splitting headache next morning. His further fortunes cannot be detailed
here. From Oxford he goes to Stratford-on-Avon, then to Lichfield and
Derby, and so to his destination, 'the great cavern near Castleton, in
the high Peake of Derbyshire,' which he describes at length. He returns
by Nottingham and Leicester, whence, still enthusiastic, but a little
weary of his humiliations on foot, he takes coach to Northampton,
mounting to the top, in company with a farmer, a young man and 'a
black-a-moor.' This eminence proving as perilous as it looked, he creeps
into the basket, in spite of the warnings of the black. 'As long as we
went up hill, it was easy and pleasant. And, having had little or no
sleep the night before, I was almost asleep among the trunks and the
packages; but how was the case altered when we came to go down hill;
then all the trunks and parcels began, as it were, to dance around me,
and everything in the basket seemed to be alive; and I every moment
received from them such violent blows, that I thought my last hour was
come. I now found that what the black had told me was no exaggeration;
but all my complaints were useless. I was obliged to suffer this torture
nearly an hour, till we came to another hill again, when, quite shaken
to pieces and sadly bruised, I again crept to the top of the coach, and
took possession of my former seat.' No wonder he concludes his part
of his experiences with a solemn warning to travellers to take inside
places in English post coaches. With his return to London his narrative
practically ends. But the rapid sketch here given of it affords no
sufficient hint of the abundance of _naïf_ detail, of simple enthusiasm
and kindly wonderment, which characterize its pages. To complete the
impression given, we should be able to suppose the writer resting
contentedly from a solitary literary effort, and ending tranquil days as
a kind of German Dr. Primrose, telling grandchildren, such as Chodowiecki
drew, how he once saw Goldsmith's monument in the great Abbey by the
Thames, and heard Pitt speak in the Parliament House at Westminster.
But this is to reckon without the all-recording pages of the 'Allgemeine
Deutsche Biographie,' and that harsh resolvent, Fact. For the future
of Pastor Charles P. Moritz was not at all in this wise. Besides his
letters to his 'dearest Gedike,' he wrote many other works, including
a 'psychological romance' and 'Travels in Italy;' became a Fine-Art
Professor; married late in life, but not happily; left no family; and,
last of all, had been dead two years when the translation which has
formed the subject of these pages was first introduced to English
readers.