porter from the inn. To my surprise, rather than satisfaction, Mrs J.
and her husband had risen, and prepared chocolate for me. The
preparations for a departure are always mournful: even animals know and
dislike them: the dog is uneasy when he sees you packing up, and the cat
wanders disturbedly from room to room, aware that some change is
preparing, and dreading all change. The smell of cords and matting
becomes associated with unsettled and uneasy feelings;—you rise by
candle-light;—every thing is unusual, unnatural, enough to depress even
joyful hope—and my departure was for ever. Mrs J. said, she trusted we
should meet again in a better world, if not in this:—"Heretic as I am,"
said she, striving to force a smile through her tears, "I am sure you
will join in the hope." Excellent woman—it cannot be heresy to believe
it.
For the first time I was now to travel alone in this country: at
Bristol, however, D. was to meet me, and this was a consolation, and a
pleasure in store. We breakfasted at Maidenhead, and then entered upon a
road which was new to me, through a level country, with easy hills on
either side in the distance, full of villages and villas: this was its
character for fifteen leagues. We passed through Reading, a town of
consequence in old times, and still flourishing. Speenhamland was the
next stage, a street connected with the town of Newbury.
On an eminence to the right of the town stand the remains of Donnington
castle, built by Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English poetry, who was
contemporary with king Don Juan I. We passed through Hungerford, and
through Marlborough forest, the only one which I have seen in England;
then came to the town of the same name, an old place, in which many of
the houses are faced with tiles in the shape of fish-scales. At the end
of the town is one of the largest inns in the kingdom, the house having
formerly been a duke's palace, with an artificial mound of remarkable
size in the garden.
There is something as peculiar as it is pleasing in the character of
this country: the villages, with their churches, are all seated in the
bottom, which is intersected by numberless little streams, in every
respect unlike the mountain rivers of the north, but still beautiful;
they flow slowly over weedy beds, sometimes through banks of oziers,
sometimes through green fields. Beyond, and on both hands, lie the
Downs, and patches of brown stubble show the advance of cultivation up
their sides; for, wherever there are neither hedges nor trees, it is a
certain mark that the land has not long been cultured. The soil is
chalky. The stage stopped at a little, clean, low alehouse, and the
coachman opened the door and asked if we would please to alight. "By all
means," said one of my fellow-travellers; and then, addressing himself
to me, he said, "If you have ever travelled this road before, sir, you
will alight of course; and if you have not, you must not pass by without
tasting the best beer in England." When I had done so, I fairly
confessed to him that if I had left England without tasting it, I should
not have known what beer was. The good woman was so well pleased with
this praise from a foreigner, that she invited me to walk into the
cellar, and, in a room on the same floor with the kitchen into which we
were introduced, (there being no other apartment for us,) she showed me
fifty barrels of beer, that quantity being always kept full. I wrote
down the name of the village, which is West Kennet, in my tablets, that
I might mention it with due honour; and also, that if ever I should
graduate in art magic in the caves of Salamanca, I might give the imp in
attendance a right direction where to go fill my glass every day at
dinner.
Near this village, and close by the road side, is the largest tumulus in
the island. As we crossed the Downs, we saw on our left the figure of a
huge white horse cut in the side of the chalk hill, so large, and in
such a situation, that in a clear day it is visible above four leagues
off. There are other such in different parts of the country, and all are
regularly weeded on a holiday appointed in each parish for the purpose.
It is perhaps a relic of Saxon superstition. I may here notice a
remarkable use which the English make of the word _horse_. They employ
it in combination to signify any thing large and coarse, as in
horse-beans, horse-chesnut, horse-radish;—sometimes it is prefixed to a
man's name as an epithet of ridicule: they say also horse-ant, and
horse-leech: and, by a still stronger compound, I have heard a woman of
masculine appearance called a horse godmother.[30] Dog is used still
more strangely in almost every possible sense: the wild rose is called
dog-rose; the scentless violet, dog-violet. Jolly dog is the highest
convivial encomium which a man can receive from his companions; honest
dog is when he superadds some good qualities to conviviality; sad dog is
when he is a reprobate: dog is the word of endearment which an
Englishman uses to his child, and it is what he calls his servant when
he is angry: puppy is the term of contempt for a coxcomb; and bitch the
worst appellation which can be applied to the worst of women. A
flatterer is called a spaniel, a ruffian is called a bull-dog, an
ill-looking fellow an ugly hound; whelp, cur, and mongrel, are terms of
contemptuous reproach to a young man; and if a young woman's nose turns
upward, she is certainly called pug.
Having passed through the towns of Calne and Chippenham, the light
failed us, and thus deprived me of the sight, as I was told, of a
beautiful country. About nine we entered Bath. My fellow-travellers all
left me, and I was landed at a good inn, for the first time without a
companion, and never more in need of one. I have been writing with a
heavy heart, lest my heart should be heavier, were I unemployed.
Wherever we go we leave something behind us to regret, and these causes
of sorrow are continually arising. Even the best blessings of life are
alloyed by some feeling of separation: the bride leaves her father's
house, when she goes to her husband's; and the anxieties of infancy are
hardly overpast, when the child goes from his mother to commence his
career of labour and of pain. It is assuredly delightful to have
travelled, but not to travel:—Oh, no! Fatigue, and the sense of
restlessness, are not all that is to be endured;—the feeling that you
are a stranger and alone comes upon you in a gloomy day, when the
spirits fall with the barometer, or when they are exhausted at evening
or at night. We paint angels with wings, and fancy that it will be part
of our privileges in heaven to move from place to place with accelerated
speed. It would be more reasonable to suppose that Satan keeps
stage-coaches, and has packets upon the Styx; that locomotion ceases
when we become perfect, and beatified man either strikes root like a
zoophyte, or is identified with his house like a tortoise.
* * * * *
Sept. 17. Bath.
If other cities are interesting as being old, Bath is not less so for
being new. It has no aqueduct, no palaces, no gates, castle, or city
walls, yet it is the finest and most striking town that I have ever seen.
According to the fabulous History of England, the virtues of the hot
springs here were discovered long before the Christian æra, by Bladud, a
British prince, who, having been driven from his father's house because
he was leprous, was reduced like the Prodigal Son to keep swine. His
pigs, says the story, had the same disease as himself: in their
wanderings they came to this valley, and rolled in the warm mud where
these waters stagnated;—they were healed by them. Bladud, perceiving
their cure, tried the same remedy with the same success, and when he
became king he built a city upon the spot. It is certain that the Romans
were acquainted with these springs, and had a station here; and it must
have been a place of some consequence some centuries ago when the
cathedral was built, yet not of much, or the diocese would not, at the
time of the schism, have been united under one bishop with that of
Wells. Within the memory of old persons, Bath consisted of a few narrow
streets in the bottom:—invalids came at that time for the benefit of its
waters; and wherever there are such places of resort, many, who have no
real complaints, will either fancy or feign them, for the sake of going
there to meet company. As the wealth of the country increased, and
habits of dissipation with it, these visitors became more numerous, and
accommodations were wanting for them.
Close to the town, between the springs and the river, was a morass. The
ground belonged to Ralph Allen, the Allworthy in Tom Jones, one of the
few English works which we have naturalized in our language. This
excellent man was of low parentage, and had in his youth been employed
in carrying letters from a post town across the country, for there was
at that time no regular communication from one town to another, except
along the direct road to London. During these solitary journeys the
thought occurred to him that it would be far better that such a
communication should be regularly established by the state, than that it
should be left to poor individuals like himself, who were neither always
to be found, nor always to be trusted: accordingly, he shaped a plan for
this purpose; government adopted it; and, in consequence, his fortune
was made. He fixed his residence on a hill about half an hour's walk
from Bath, and, carrying with him into retirement the same active mind
which had been the means of his advancement from obscurity, willingly
listened to any plan which could be devised for the improvement of the
city. There was then in the city an architect of real genius, by name
Wood; and upon this morass of Mr Allen's he erected two rows of houses,
one fronting the north, the other the south; connected them by two
transverse streets, of which the houses were built upon the same plan;
and left in front a magnificent paved terrace, about thirty paces in
breadth, raised upon arches, and open to the country. The houses were
designed for lodgers; they are large and lofty, and are certainly the
finest range of private buildings in the whole kingdom, and, perhaps, in
the whole world.
About the same time a townsman, who had amassed some fortune in trade,
built a theatre just of that size in which the voice could be heard in
all parts of the house without being strained, and the movements of the
countenance seen without being distorted. While the town was thus
improved by the enterprising liberality of its inhabitants, it derived
no less advantage from the humour of one of those men who are contented
to exhibit strong sense, in playing the fool well all the days of their
lives. By this time more persons visited Bath in search of pleasure than
of health, and these persons, among other amusements, had their public
dances.—Now, though Englishmen have proved that they can go on
peaceably, orderly, and well, under a free government, it was found
utterly impossible to keep English women in order by any thing short of
an absolute monarchy. Precedency, in these public meetings, was
furiously contested,—because, in most instances, there was no criterion
of rank whereby it could be decided; and points which are most doubtful,
and, it may be added, most insignificant, are oftentimes the most warmly
disputed: a perpetual Dictator for the realm of Fashion was necessary,
and this person was the second who held the office. Nash was his name,
and his fitness for the office is attested by the title of Beau, which
is always prefixed to it;—Charlemagne, the Venerable Bede, and Beau
Nash, being the only three persons whose names are always accompanied
with the epithets which characterize them.
Beau Nash was as great as Charlemagne in his way, and in this respect
greater, that the system which he established became permanent, and he
transmitted an empire to his successors which has become yearly more and
more extensive. He made laws to regulate when the company should
assemble, and when they should separate; arranged the tactics of the
dance; enacted the dress in which ladies should appear; and, if they
ventured to disobey and come in without the wedding garment, made no
scruple, whatever might be their rank, of turning them out. His strong
sense and sarcastic humour kept them in awe. Such a man would in old
times have been selected for the king's fool; he seems to have
considered himself as standing in some such capacity to the Bath
visitors, and made use of the privilege which the character allowed him.
The follies of mankind were his food. He gambled, and his profits were
such as enabled him to live expensively, and keep an equipage and a
large retinue. This life terminated in its natural and righteous way. He
became old and helpless, lived to stand in need of that charity which he
had never withheld from the needy, but which none extended to him, and
died poor, neglected, and miserable; the inhabitants of Bath rewarding
his genius after the usual manner in which genius of a higher character
is rewarded, by erecting a statue to the honour of the man whom they had
suffered almost to starve.
Once, after his death, his loss was exemplified in a very remarkable
manner. Two ladies of quality quarrelled in the ballroom. The rest of
the company took part, some on one side, some on the other; Beau Nash
was gone, and they stood in no awe of his successor: they became
outrageous, a real battle-royal took place, and the floor was strewn
with caps, lappets, curls and cushions, diamond pins and pearls.
Since the Parades were built every addition to the town has been made
upon system, and with a view to its beauty: hence it presents the
singular spectacle of a city of which the parts are uniform, yet the
whole irregular;—a few old streets still remaining to make the others
more remarkable by contrast. The adjoining hills supply a soft
freestone, which is easily worked, and becomes harder when exposed to
the air: its colour is very beautiful when fresh, but it is soon
blackened by the soot from the earth-coal fires, which is indeed
exceedingly annoying in all the large towns. Still, blackened stones
produce a far better effect than blackened bricks. There is a Square of
which the sides resemble so many palaces; ascend a handsome street from
this, and you come into a Circus of like beauty, and near this is a
Crescent built with equal, or even more magnificence, and overlooking
the country. There are three of these crescents on the hills; one of
them remains unfinished, because the ground in front has not been well
secured, but in situation it is the finest of the three. A fourth in the
valley remains one of the melancholy new ruins, which the projectors
were unable to complete, and so were ruined themselves, a sudden check
having been given to all such speculations when the last war broke out.
It is plain that Bath has outgrown its beauty. Long suburbs extend now
on every side of the city, and the meads on the opposite side of the
river, which, when the Parades were built, justified the motto upon one
of the houses, _Rus in Urbe_, are now covered with another town. It must
have been in its perfection when there was nothing beyond the new bridge
nor above the old Crescent.
I passed the whole morning in perambulating the town, seeing it in all
its parts. The cathedral is small but beautiful; it has suffered much
from the fanatics. The Pump-room is a handsome building, and hears above
the entrance the words of Pindar, +Ariston men hydôr+, here used in a
sense concerning which there can be no dispute. I found my way into the
market, which for its excellent order and abundance surpasses any thing
in London, and is as surprising a sight as any in the place. There being
in some places no carriage road, and in others so wide a pavement that
in wet weather there would be no getting at the carriage, sedan chairs
are used instead. They are very numerous, and with the chairmen, who all
wear large coats of dark blue, form another distinguishing peculiarity
of this remarkable town. There are two public ball-rooms, and two
masters of the ceremonies, Beau Nash's empire having been divided,
because it was grown too large for the superintendance of any
individual: these rooms are handsome, and lighted with splendid
chandeliers of cut glass, but they want that light ornamental festive
character which southern taste would have given them. Some sober
Englishmen in the anti-chambers were silently busied at whist, though it
was noon-day,—some of them, it seems, make it the study of their lives,
and others their trade. It is a fine place for gamblers, and for that
species of men called fortune-hunters, a race of swindlers of the worst
kind, who are happily unknown in Spain. They make it their business to
get a wife of fortune, having none themselves: age, ugliness, and even
idiocy, being no objections. They usually come from Ireland, and behave
as ill to the women whom they have trepanned, after marriage, as the
women deserve for trusting them. It is also the Canaan of Physicians;
for it abounds with wealthy patients, many of whom will have any disease
which the doctor will be pleased to find out for them: but even Canaan
may be overstocked, and, it seems, more of Death's advanced guard have
assembled here than can find milk and honey.
The enormous joints of meat which come to an English table are always
roasted upon a spit as long as the old two-handed sword;[31] these spits
are now turned by a wheel in the chimney which the smoke sets in motion,
but formerly by the labour of a dog who was trained to run in a wheel.
There was a peculiar breed for the purpose, called turnspits from their
occupation, long-backed and short-legged; they are now nearly extinct.
The mode of teaching them their business was more summary than humane:
the dog was put in the wheel, and a burning coal with him; he could not
stop without burning his legs, and so was kept upon the full gallop.
These dogs were by no means fond of their profession; it was indeed hard
work to run in a wheel for two or three hours, turning a piece of meat
which was twice their own weight. Some years ago a party of young men at
Bath hired the chairmen on a Saturday night to steal all the turnspits
in town, and lock them up till the following evening. Accordingly on
Sunday, when every body has roast meat for dinner, all the cooks were to
be seen in the streets,—"Pray have you seen our Chloe?" says one. "Why,"
replies the other, "I was coming to ask you if you had seen our Pompey:"
up came a third, while they were talking, to enquire for her Toby,—and
there was no roast meat in Bath that day.
It is told of these dogs in this city, that one Sunday, when they had as
usual followed their mistresses to church, the lesson for the day
happened to be that chapter in Ezekiel, wherein the self-moving chariots
are described. When first the word wheel was pronounced, all the curs
pricked up their ears in alarm; at the second wheel they set up a
doleful howl; and when the dreaded word was uttered a third time, every
one of them scampered out of church as fast as he could, with his tail
between his legs.
[30] _Cavallo comadre._ The meaning of the words cannot be mistaken, but
the expression is not known to the translator: neither does he know that
men are called horses in England as well as asses, unless, indeed, that
a man with a long face is said to be like a horse.—TR.
[31] Estoque.
LETTER LXXV.
_Road from Bath to Bristol.—Cornu-Ammonis.—Bristol.—Exchange.—
Market.—Cathedral.—The Brazen Eagle.—Clifton.—Bristol-Wells.—
Anecdote of Kosciusko._
From Bath to Bristol is three leagues; the road crosses the river Avon
by an old bridge, and continues for some way along its banks, or at
little distance from them. Half a league from Bath is the house wherein
Fielding is said to have written Tom Jones; it stands by the way side,
in a village called Twyverton, and I did not look at it without respect.
We had a fine view of the river winding under a hill which is covered
with old trees, and has a mansion on its brow, opposite to which, on our
side the water, was the largest and finest meadow I have seen in
England, in which an immense herd was feeding, as in a savannah. A
little dirty town, called Keynsham, stands about half way. I noticed the
Cornu-Ammonis built up in the walls of many of the houses, or, if it
happened to be a fine specimen, placed over the door-way, as an
ornament. This, I find, has given rise to a fabulous legend, which says
that St Keyna, from whom the place takes its name, resided here in a
solitary wood full of venomous serpents, and her prayers converted them
into these stones, which still retain their shape. Beyond this there is
a fantastic building, more like a castle than any thing else: I could
neither guess for what it was intended, nor of what it was built. It
proved to be the stables belonging to a great house on the opposite side
of the road, from which there is a subterranean passage, and the
materials were the scoria from some neighbouring iron-works, with which
I soon perceived that the walls by the road side were capt: for this it
is excellently adapted, as nothing will vegetate upon it, and it is
undecomposable by the weather. Here we once more approached the river,
which was now a dirty stream, flowing through wide banks of mud. Bristol
was presently in sight,—a huge city in the bottom, and extending up all
the adjoining hills, with many steeples, one of which inclines so much
from the perpendicular, that I should be sorry to live within reach of
its fall,—and the black towers of many glass-houses rolling up black
smoke. We entered through a gate of modern and mean architecture into a
street which displayed as much filth, and as much poverty, as I have
seen in any English town. Here, for the first time, I saw something like
a public fountain, with a painted statue of Neptune above it, which is
as little creditable to the decency of the magistrates as to the state
of arts in the city. The entrance into Bristol is, however, the worst
part of it. We crossed the bridge, where there is a fine opening, and
full in view a modern church and spire, so beautifully proportioned, and
therefore so fine, that you do not at first perceive that the whole
building is perfectly plain and unornamented.
D. was awaiting my arrival. He had secured our places for Exeter in
to-morrow's coach, and I lost no time in seeing what he, as being
acquainted with the place, thought most worthy to be seen. The exchange,
a fine edifice, about half a century old, was opposite to the inn-door
at which the stage had stopped: its inclosed square is exceedingly
beautiful, more so than any thing of the kind which I have seen
elsewhere:—yet, it seems, the citizens choose to assemble in the street,
in front, where some friend to the city, in old times, erected four
brazen tables, on which his town's-folk might count out their money in
their public dealings. On one of these a man was selling newspapers, on
another a cage of goldfinches was exposed to sale. Behind the exchange
is the market, which is even finer than that of Bath. It contains three
market-houses, to which cheese, butter, pork, poultry, &c. are brought
by women from the country. The shambles stand in another part; and
another is appropriated for vegetables, secured from the weather by a
range of slated sheds. I never saw, even at a fair, a busier or more
crowded scene, and every thing was going on with that order and dispatch
which characterize this extraordinary nation.
We crossed a wooden draw-bridge over the bed of a river, where the ships
were lying on a bed of mud, and the water was not wider than a common
street gutter: it was full of small craft; the view on one side extended
down the river into the country: there was the bustle of business along
the quays and in the streets; one church tower of singular beauty
was in sight, and the whole scene was fine and rememberable. The
cathedral stands in a place with old trees in front; it is a poor
building,—excepting Chester, the least interesting in England. The
entrance is disfigured by a door-way in the very worst style of modern
architecture. A fine cross, which formerly stood in the square, has been
sold by the corporation to a gentleman, who has re-erected it at his
country-seat, and thus rescued it from destruction! This was about
thirty years ago; the person who told me this, said he did not remember
it, but had often in his childhood eaten it in gingerbread. Instead of
ascending, you descend into this church, by several steps; the pavement
is therefore necessarily damp, and, what is truly abominable, stinks of
the abominations which are, in contempt of all decency, committed
against the doors, and find their way down.