Your fable of the monkey and the pig, is what the Italians call ben
trovata: but I shall not repeat it to my apothecary, who is a proud
Scotchman, very thin skinned, and, for aught I know, may have his degree
in his pocket--A right Scotchman has always two strings to his bow, and
is in utrumque paratus--Certain it is, I have not ‘scaped a scouring;
but, I believe, by means of that scouring, I have ‘scaped something
worse, perhaps a tedious fit of the gout or rheumatism; for my appetite
began to flag, and I had certain croakings in the bowels, which boded me
no good--Nay, I am not yet quite free of these remembrances, which warn
me to be gone from this centre of infection--
What temptation can a man of my turn and temperament have, to live in
a place where every corner teems with fresh objects of detestation
and disgust? What kind of taste and organs must those people have,
who really prefer the adulterate enjoyments of the town to the genuine
pleasures of a country retreat? Most people, I know, are originally
seduced by vanity, ambition, and childish curiosity; which cannot be
gratified, but in the busy haunts of men: but, in the course of this
gratification, their very organs of sense are perverted, and they become
habitually lost to every relish of what is genuine and excellent in its
own nature.
Shall I state the difference between my town grievances, and my country
comforts? At Brambleton-hall, I have elbow-room within doors, and
breathe a clear, elastic, salutary air--I enjoy refreshing sleep, which
is never disturbed by horrid noise, nor interrupted, but in a-morning,
by the sweet twitter of the martlet at my window--I drink the virgin
lymph, pure and chrystalline as it gushes from the rock, or the
sparkling beveridge, home-brewed from malt of my own making; or I
indulge with cyder, which my own orchard affords; or with claret of
the best growth, imported for my own use, by a correspondent on whose
integrity I can depend; my bread is sweet and nourishing, made from my
own wheat, ground in my own mill, and baked in my own oven; my table
is, in a great measure, furnished from my own ground; my five-year old
mutton, fed on the fragrant herbage of the mountains, that might vie
with venison in juice and flavour; my delicious veal, fattened with
nothing but the mother’s milk, that fills the dish with gravy; my
poultry from the barn-door, that never knew confinement, but when they
were at roost; my rabbits panting from the warren; my game fresh from
the moors; my trout and salmon struggling from the stream; oysters from
their native banks; and herrings, with other sea fish, I can eat in
four hours after they are taken--My sallads, roots, and potherbs, my own
garden yields in plenty and perfection; the produce of the natural
soil, prepared by moderate cultivation. The same soil affords all the
different fruits which England may call her own, so that my dessert is
every day fresh-gathered from the tree; my dairy flows with nectarious
tildes of milk and cream, from whence we derive abundance of excellent
butter, curds, and cheese; and the refuse fattens my pigs, that are
destined for hams and bacon--I go to bed betimes, and rise with the
sun--I make shift to pass the hours without weariness or regret, and
am not destitute of amusements within doors, when the weather will not
permit me to go abroad--I read, and chat, and play at billiards, cards
or back-gammon--Without doors, I superintend my farm, and execute
plans of improvements, the effects of which I enjoy with unspeakable
delight--Nor do I take less pleasure in seeing my tenants thrive under
my auspices, and the poor live comfortably by the employment which I
provide--You know I have one or two sensible friends, to whom I can open
all my heart; a blessing which, perhaps, I might have sought in vain
among the crowded scenes of life: there are a few others of more humble
parts, whom I esteem for their integrity; and their conversation I find
inoffensive, though not very entertaining. Finally, I live in the midst
of honest men, and trusty dependents, who, I flatter myself, have a
disinterested attachment to my person. You, yourself, my dear Doctor,
can vouch for the truth of these assertions.
Now, mark the contrast at London--I am pent up in frowzy lodgings, where
there is not room enough to swing a cat; and I breathe the steams
of endless putrefaction; and these would, undoubtedly, produce a
pestilence, if they were not qualified by the gross acid of sea-coal,
which is itself a pernicious nuisance to lungs of any delicacy of
texture: but even this boasted corrector cannot prevent those languid,
sallow looks, that distinguish the inhabitants of London from those
ruddy swains that lead a country-life--I go to bed after midnight, jaded
and restless from the dissipations of the day--I start every hour from
my sleep, at the horrid noise of the watchmen bawling the hour through
every street, and thundering at every door; a set of useless fellows,
who serve no other purpose but that of disturbing the repose of the
inhabitants; and by five o’clock I start out of bed, in consequence
of the still more dreadful alarm made by the country carts, and noisy
rustics bellowing green pease under my window. If I would drink water,
I must quaff the maukish contents of an open aqueduct, exposed to all
manner of defilement; or swallow that which comes from the river
Thames, impregnated with all the filth of London and Westminster--Human
excrement is the least offensive part of the concrete, which is
composed of all the drugs, minerals, and poisons, used in mechanics and
manufacture, enriched with the putrefying carcasses of beasts and men;
and mixed with the scourings of all the wash-tubs, kennels, and common
sewers, within the bills of mortality.
This is the agreeable potation, extolled by the Londoners, as the finest
water in the universe--As to the intoxicating potion, sold for wine, it
is a vile, unpalatable, and pernicious sophistication, balderdashed with
cyder, corn-spirit, and the juice of sloes. In an action at law, laid
against a carman for having staved a cask of port, it appeared from the
evidence of the cooper, that there were not above five gallons of real
wine in the whole pipe, which held above a hundred, and even that had
been brewed and adulterated by the merchant at Oporto. The bread I
eat in London, is a deleterious paste, mixed up with chalk, alum, and
bone-ashes; insipid to the taste, and destructive to the constitution.
The good people are not ignorant of this adulteration--but they prefer
it to wholesome bread, because it is whiter than the meal of corn: thus
they sacrifice their taste and their health, and the lives of their
tender infants, to a most absurd gratification of a mis-judging eye; and
the miller, or the baker, is obliged to poison them and their families,
in order to live by his profession. The same monstrous depravity appears
in their veal, which is bleached by repeated bleedings, and other
villainous arts, till there is not a drop of juice left in the body,
and the poor animal is paralytic before it dies; so void of all taste,
nourishment, and savour, that a man might dine as comfortably on a white
fricassee of kid-skin gloves; or chip hats from Leghorn.
As they have discharged the natural colour from their bread, their
butchers-meat, and poultry, their cutlets, ragouts, fricassees and
sauces of all kinds; so they insist upon having the complexion of their
potherbs mended, even at the hazard of their lives. Perhaps, you will
hardly believe they can be so mad as to boil their greens with brass
halfpence, in order to improve their colour; and yet nothing is more
true--Indeed, without this improvement in the colour, they have no
personal merit. They are produced in an artificial soil, and taste
of nothing but the dunghills, from whence they spring. My cabbage,
cauliflower, and ‘sparagus in the country, are as much superior in
flavour to those that are sold in Covent-garden, as my heath-mutton is
to that of St James’s-market; which in fact, is neither lamb nor mutton,
but something betwixt the two, gorged in the rank fens of Lincoln and
Essex, pale, coarse, and frowzy--As for the pork, it is an abominable
carnivorous animal, fed with horse-flesh and distillers’ grains; and
the poultry is all rotten, in consequence of a fever, occasioned by
the infamous practice of sewing up the gut, that they may be the sooner
fattened in coops, in consequence of this cruel retention.
Of the fish, I need say nothing in this hot weather, but that it comes
sixty, seventy, fourscore, and a hundred miles by land-carriage; a
circumstance sufficient without any comment, to turn a Dutchman’s
stomach, even if his nose was not saluted in every alley with the sweet
flavour of fresh mackarel, selling by retail. This is not the season for
oysters; nevertheless, it may not be amiss to mention, that the right
Colchester are kept in slime-pits, occasionally overflowed by the sea;
and that the green colour, so much admired by the voluptuaries of this
metropolis, is occasioned by the vitriolic scum, which rises on the
surface of the stagnant and stinking water--Our rabbits are bred and
fed in the poulterer’s cellar, where they have neither air nor exercise,
consequently they must be firm in flesh, and delicious in flavour; and
there is no game to be had for love or money.
It must be owned, the Covent-garden affords some good fruit; which,
however, is always engrossed by a few individuals of overgrown fortune,
at an exorbitant price; so that little else than the refuse of the
market falls to the share of the community; and that is distributed
by such filthy hands, as I cannot look at without loathing. It was but
yesterday that I saw a dirty barrow-bunter in the street, cleaning her
dusty fruit with her own spittle; and, who knows but some fine lady
of St James’s parish might admit into her delicate mouth those very
cherries, which had been rolled and moistened between the filthy, and,
perhaps, ulcerated chops of a St Giles’s huckster--I need not dwell upon
the pallid, contaminated mash, which they call strawberries; soiled and
tossed by greasy paws through twenty baskets crusted with dirt; and then
presented with the worst milk, thickened with the worst flour, into a
bad likeness of cream: but the milk itself should not pass unanalysed,
the produce of faded cabbage-leaves and sour draff, lowered with hot
water, frothed with bruised snails, carried through the streets in open
pails, exposed to foul rinsings, discharged from doors and windows,
spittle, snot, and tobacco-quids from foot passengers, overflowings from
mud carts, spatterings from coach wheels, dirt and trash chucked into it
by roguish boys for the joke’s sake, the spewings of infants, who have
slabbered in the tin-measure, which is thrown back in that condition
among the milk, for the benefit of the next customer; and, finally,
the vermin that drops from the rags of the nasty drab that vends this
precious mixture, under the respectable denomination of milk-maid.
I shall conclude this catalogue of London dainties, with that
table-beer, guiltless of hops and malt, vapid and nauseous; much fitter
to facilitate the operation of a vomit, than to quench thirst and
promote digestion; the tallowy rancid mass, called butter, manufactured
with candle grease and kitchen stuff; and their fresh eggs, imported
from France and Scotland.--Now, all these enormities might be remedied
with a very little attention to the article of police, or civil
regulation; but the wise patriots of London have taken it into their
heads, that all regulation is inconsistent with liberty; and that every
man ought to live in his own way, without restraint--Nay, as there is
not sense enough left among them, to be discomposed by the nuisance I
have mentioned, they may, for aught I care, wallow in the mire of their
own pollution.
A companionable man will, undoubtedly put up with many inconveniences
for the sake of enjoying agreeable society. A facetious friend of mine
used to say, the wine could not be bad, where the company was agreeable;
a maxim which, however, ought to be taken cum grano salis: but what
is the society of London, that I should be tempted, for its sake, to
mortify my senses, and compound with such uncleanness as my soul abhors?
All the people I see, are too much engrossed by schemes of interest or
ambition, to have any room left for sentiment or friendship. Even in
some of my old acquaintance, those schemes and pursuits have obliterated
all traces of our former connexion--Conversation is reduced to party
disputes, and illiberal altercation--Social commerce, to formal visits
and card-playing--If you pick up a diverting original by accident, it
may be dangerous to amuse yourself with his oddities--He is generally a
tartar at bottom; a sharper, a spy, or a lunatic. Every person you deal
with endeavours to overreach you in the way of business; you are preyed
upon by idle mendicants, who beg in the phrase of borrowing, and live
upon the spoils of the stranger--Your tradesmen are without conscience,
your friends without affection, and your dependents without fidelity.--
My letter would swell into a treatise, were I to particularize every
cause of offence that fills up the measure of my aversion to this, and
every other crowded city--Thank Heaven! I am not so far sucked into
the vortex, but that I can disengage myself without any great effort of
philosophy--From this wild uproar of knavery, folly, and impertinence, I
shall fly with double relish to the serenity of retirement, the cordial
effusions of unreserved friendship, the hospitality and protection
of the rural gods; in a word, the jucunda oblivia Vitae, which Horace
himself had not taste enough to enjoy.--
I have agreed for a good travelling-coach and four, at a guinea a day,
for three months certain; and next week we intend to begin our
journey to the North, hoping still to be with you by the latter end of
October--I shall continue to write from every stage where we make any
considerable halt, as often as anything occurs, which I think can
afford you the least amusement. In the mean time, I must beg you will
superintend the oeconomy of Barns, with respect to my hay and corn
harvests; assured that my ground produces nothing but what you may
freely call your own--On any other terms I should be ashamed to
subscribe myself
Your unvariable friend, MATT. BRAMBLE LONDON, June 8.
To Sir WATKIN PHILLIPS, Bart. of Jesus college, Oxon.