O’erlaid with black, staid wisdom’s hue:
“The villages to north of Trent are but indifferent, and the churches
very thin sown; and, indeed, for a long time one would think the
country of no religion at all, there being hardly either Christian
church or heathen temple to be seen. The fields on both hands were
mostly grass; and the greatest variety and plenty of fine cattle, all
of various colours. I admired the cattle much more than the people; for
they seem to have the least of what we call smartness of any folks I
ever saw, and totally void of all sort of curiosity--which, perhaps,
some may think a good quality.... As for the inclosing in England,
it is of all the different methods, both good and bad, that can be
imagined; and that such insufficient inclosures, as some are, keep in
the cattle (which is so hard with us in Scotland) is entirely owing
to the levelness of the grounds; so that an English cow does not see
another spot than where she feeds, and has as little intelligence as
the people.” Surely the cows are to be pitied, born incapable of taking
comprehensive views of things in this flat and unprofitable land.
If ever there arose a chance of wider views for the fair traveller,
England rose not in her esteem on that account. “Sometimes,” she owns,
“we had an extensive prospect, but not the least variety, so that we
could say there was too much of it. No water, no distinction between
a gentleman’s seat and his tenant’s house, but that he was a little
more smothered up with trees.” The lady, when she reached London, found
the same reason for contempt of Hyde Park as a place of resort; it was
naught, because it was quite smothered with trees. She also surprised
the crowded Londoners that she thought England on the whole less
populous than Scotland, and there is a good deal of right observation
in the sketch she gives of England extra-metropolitan a hundred years
ago.
“In the first place, look from the road on each hand, and you see very
few houses; towns there are, but at the distance of eight or ten miles.
Then, who is it that lives in them? There are no manufactories carried
on in them; they live by the travellers and the country about; that is,
there are tradesmen of all kinds, perhaps two or three of each--smiths,
wrights, shoemakers, &c.; and here is a squire of a small estate in
the country near by; and here are Mrs. This, or That, old maids, and
so many widow ladies with a parsonage house, a flourishing house. All
the houses, built of brick, and very slight, and even some of timber,
and two stories high, make them have a greater appearance than there
is reality for; for I shall suppose you took out the squire and set
him in his country house, and the old maids and widow ladies and place
them with their relations, if they have any, in the country, or in a
greater town, and take a stone house with a thatch roof of one storey
instead of a brick one of two, and there are few country villages in
Scotland where I will not muster out as many inhabitants as are in
any of these post towns. Then I observed there were few folks to be
met with on the road, and many times we could post an hour, which is
seven miles, and not see as many houses and people put together on the
road! Then on Sunday, we travelled from eight o’clock till we came to
Newcastle, where the church was just going in; so that I may say we
travelled fifteen miles to Newcastle; and the few people we met going
to church upon the road surprised me much. The same as we went all day
long; it had no appearance of the swarms of people we always see in
Scotland going about on Sunday, even far from any considerable town.
Then,” adds the Scotch lady, “the high price of labour is an evidence
of the scarcity of people. I went into what we call a cottage, and
there was a young woman with her child, sitting; it was very clean, and
laid with coarse flags on the floor, but built with timber stoops, and
what we call cat and clay walls. She took me into what she called her
parlour, for the magnificent names they give things makes very fine
till we see them; this parlour was just like to the other. I asked her
what her husband was. She said, a labouring man, and got his shilling
a day; that she did nothing but took care of her children, and now and
then wrought a little plain work. So I found that, except it was in
the manufacturing counties, the women do nothing; and if there were
as many men in the country as one might suppose there would be, a man
could be got for less wages than a shilling per day. Then the high
wages at London shows the country cannot provide it with servants. It
drains the country, and none return again who ever goes as chairmen,
porters, hackney coachmen, or footmen; if they come to old age, seldom
spend it in the country, but often in an almshouse, and often leave no
posterity. Then the export they make of their victual is a presumption
they have not inhabitants to consume it in the country, for, by the
common calculation, there are seven millions and one half in England,
and the ground in the kingdom is twenty-eight millions of acres, which
is four acres to each person. Take into this the immense quantity of
horses which are kept for no real use all over the kingdom, and it
will be found, I think, that England could maintain many more people
than are in it. Besides, let every nation pick out its own native
subjects who are but in the first generation, the Irish, the Scots,
the French, &c., and I am afraid the native English would appear much
fewer than they imagine. On the other hand, Scotland must appear to
be more populous for its extent and produce; first, by its bearing
as many evacuations in proportion, both to the plantations, the
fleet, and army, besides the numbers who go to England, and, indeed,
breeding inhabitants to every country under the sun; and if, instead
of following the wrong policy of supplying their deficiency of grain
by importing it, they would cultivate their waste lands, it would do
more than maintain all its inhabitants in plenty.” The lady presently
becomes severe: “I do not think the soil near London is naturally rich,
and neither the corns nor grass are extraordinary. I thought their
crops of hay all very light, and but of an indifferent quality; they
call it meadow hay, but we could call it tending pretty nearly to bog
hay.”
Her admiration of things English seems indeed to have been confined
pretty closely to its immense number of fine horses. “As for London,
the first sight of it did not strike me with anything grand or
magnificent.... Many authors and correspondents take up much time and
pains to little purpose on descriptions. I never could understand
anybody’s descriptions, and I suppose nobody will understand mine; so
will only say London is a very large and extensive city. But I had time
to see very little of it, and every street is so like another that,
seeing part, you may easily suppose the whole.”
Then for the heads of London, your ill-meaning, politician lords, the
lady Samson pulls their temple down over their heads. “You will think
it very odd that I was a fortnight in London, and saw none of the royal
family; but I got no clothes made till the day before I left, though I
gave them to the making the day after I came. I cannot say my curiosity
was great. I found, as I approached the court and the grandees, they
sunk so miserably, and came so far short of the ideas I had conceived,
that I was loth to lose the grand ideas I had of kings, princes,
ministers of state, senators, &c., which, I suppose, I had gathered
from romance in my youth. We used to laugh at the English for being so
soon afraid when there was any danger in state affairs; but now I do
excuse them. For we, at a distance, think the wisdom of our governors
will prevent all those things; but those who know and see our ministers
every day, see there is no wisdom in them, and that they are a parcel
of old, ignorant, senseless bodies, who mind nothing but eating and
drinking, and rolling about in their carriages in Hyde Park, and know
no more of the country, or the situation of it, nor of the numbers,
strength, and circumstances of it, than they never had been in it. And
how should they, when London and twenty miles round it is the extent
ever they saw of it?”
There were here some remarks not very inappropriate, considering
that they were written when the Duke of Newcastle was fighting on his
stumps, and the ferment concerning Admiral Byng was at its height.
There seems to have been some connection between the Calderwoods
and Mr. George Stone Scott, sub-preceptor to the Prince of Wales,
afterwards George the Third. Mrs. Calderwood says--“I had frequent
opportunities of seeing George Scott, and asked him many questions
about the Prince of Wales. He says he is a lad of very good principles,
good-natured, extremely honest, has no heroic strain, but loves peace,
and has no turn for extravagance; modest, and has no tendency to vice,
and has as yet very virtuous principles; has the greatest temptations
to gallant with the ladies, who lay themselves out in the most shameful
manner to draw him in, but to no purpose. He says, if he were not what
he is they would not mind him. Prince Edward is of a more amorous
complexion; but no court is paid to him, because he has so little
chance to be king.” Mrs. C.! Mrs. C.! how sweet a dish of scandal! We
will next meet with her setting out in gracious humour, and will not be
startled should a ripple come over the current of her thoughts.
“Any of the English folks I got acquainted with I liked very well. They
seemed to be good-natured and humane; but still there is a sort of
ignorance about them with regard to the rest of the world, and their
conversation runs in a very narrow channel. They speak with a great
relish of their public places, and say, with a sort of flutter, that
they shall go to Vauxhall and Ranelagh, but do not seem to enjoy it
when there. As for Vauxhall and Ranelagh, I wrote my opinion of them
before. The first I think but a vulgar sort of entertainment, and could
not think myself in genteel company whiles I heard a man calling ‘Take
care of your watches and pockets!’ I saw the Countess of Coventry at
Ranelagh. I think she is a pert, stinking-like hussy, going about with
her face up to the sky, that she might see from under her hat, which
she had pulled quite over nose, that nobody might see her face. She was
in deshabille, and very shabby drest, but was painted over her very
jawbones. I saw only three English peers, and I think you could not
make a tolerable _one_ out of them.... I saw very few, either men or
women, tolerably handsome.”
But her woman’s heart could not resist the men in regimentals; she was
determined, too, to have a good look at them, as her journal tells.
“I went one morning to the park, in hopes to see the Duke review a
troop of the Horse Guards, but he was not there; but the Guards were
very pretty. Sall Blackwood and Miss Buller were with me; they were
afraid to push near for the crowd, but I was resolved to get forward,
so pushed in. They were very surly, and one of them asked me where I
would be,--would I have my toes trod off? ‘Is your toes trode off?’
said I. ‘No,’ said he. ‘Then give me your place, and I’ll take care of
my toes.’ ‘But they are going to fire,’ said he. ‘Then it’s time for
you to march off,’ said I, ‘for I can stand fire. I wish your troops
may do as well.’ On which he sneaked off, and gave me his place.”
A few other sketches we give for the sake of their succinctness.
Greenwich Hospital “is a ridiculous fine thing.” The view from
the hill, there, “is very pretty, which you see just as well in a
raree-show glass. No wonder the English are transported with a place
they can see about them in.”
We give also as a curiosity, because we wonder how the lady ventured to
present to us,--King George the Second in his bedroom at Kensington.
“There are a small bed with silk curtains, two satin quilts, and no
blanket; a hair mattress; a plain wicker basket stands on a table, with
a silk night-gown and night-cap in it; a candle with an extinguisher;
some billets of wood on each side of the fire. He goes to bed alone,
rises, lights his fire, and tends it himself, and nobody knows when he
rises, which is very early, and he is up several hours before he calls
anybody. He dines in a small room adjoining, in which there is nothing
but very common things. He sometimes, they say, sups with his daughters
and their company, and is very merry, and sings French songs; but at
present he is in low spirits.”
Finally, let us show how Mrs. Calderwood brings her acutely
haggis-loving mind to bear upon the English ignorance of what is good
for dinner.
“As for their victuals, they make such a work about, I cannot enter
into the tastes of them, or rather, I think they have no taste to enter
into. The meat is juicy enough, but has so little taste that if you
shut your eyes, you will not know, by either taste or smell, what you
are eating. The lamb and veal look as if they had been blanched in
water. The smell of dinner will never intimate that it is on the table.
No such effluvia as beef and cabbage was ever found in London! The
fish, I think, have the same fault.”
At the want of a sufficiently high smell to the fish eaten by the
English, we are very well content to stop, and stop accordingly.