Before quitting a phase of my life, which many, if not most, old men are
wont to look back on as their happiest time, but which I, by so
considering, should grievously wrong many a subsequent period, I may
string together at random a few notes from my diaries, which may seem to
contribute some touch or trait to the story of the way we lived sixty
years since.
The way men lived in Germany at that date, I find given in a letter from
the Baron de Zandt to my mother, as follows: “In many parts of Germany,”
says the Baron, who, as I very well remember, understood what good
living was, “a man may be boarded and lodged comfortably for £26 a year.
If he prefers economy to comfort, it might be done for considerably
less.”
From the journal of a walking tour in South Devon, performed in the year
1831, I take the well-nigh incredible statement, that no tobacconist _ex
professo_ could at that date be found in Plymouth! “I succeeded after
some research,” says the diary, “in getting some tolerable tobacco from
a chymist.” Doubtless plenty of tobacco was to be had, _if_ I had known
where to look for it--at chandlers’ shops and taverns. But I have no
doubt that the statement in the fifty-five-year-old “text” is correct.
No tobacconist’s shop was then to be found in Plymouth.
In July, 1832, I was walking in Wales, and reaching Caermarthen in
assize time (where Judge Alderson, as is recorded, was trying prisoners
on the Crown side), found much difficulty in getting any accommodation
for bed or even board. But at length a commercial gentleman at the Ivy
Bush, the principal inn, “entering into conversation in a patronising
sort of way, told me it was a _h_error to suppose that commercial men
were _h_adverse to gentlemen making use of the commercial room provided
they _was_ gentlemen. For himself, he was always most ’appy to associate
with gentlemen;” and, in fine, invited me to join their table, which I
did at two o’clock. One of the assembled party--there were some fifteen
or sixteen of them--was formally named president for the day, and took
the head of the table. We were excruciatingly genteel. I, in my
ignorance, asked for beer, but was with much politeness informed that
malt liquor was not used at their table. Every man was expected to
consume a pint of most atrocious sherry at 5_s._ 6_d._, which I suppose
compensated the landlord for the wonderfully small price of the dinner.
A dinner of three courses, consisting of salmon, chicken, venison, three
or four made dishes, and pastry, was put before us. I was surprised at
the gorgeousness of this feast, and began to have alarming anticipations
of the _amari aliquid_ which must follow. But I was assured that this
was the ordinary every-day fare of the “commercial gentlemen,” and the
bill for the repast was two shillings! My diary records that the
conversation at table in no wise savoured of trade in any of its
branches. Shakespeare and Walter Scott were descanted on in turn, and
one dapper little man, who travelled in cutlery, averred that Sir Walter
had on one occasion been exceedingly polite to him, and he should always
say to the end of his life that he was a gentleman.
At Dolgelly I was struck by the practice prevailing there of tolling,
after the ringing of the curfew, a number of strokes on the biggest bell
equal to the number of the days which had elapsed of the current month.
I wonder whether they do so still?
I went out of my way, I find, in the course of the same journey, in
order to go from Liverpool to Manchester by the new railway, which to
me, as to thousands of others, was an object of infinite curiosity and
interest. My diary notes that there were fifteen carriages attached to
the engine, each carrying twelve passengers. Two of these were
first-class, and the fare for the journey to Manchester in them was
5_s._; in the others the fare was 3_s._ 6_d._ The train I was to travel
by was called a second-class train. The first-class trains carried no
second-class passengers, and did the journey of fifty-two miles in one
hour and a half. They stopped only once on the way. The second-class
trains stopped frequently, and were two hours on the road. I estimated
the speed at something over twenty-five miles an hour, and remark in my
diary that “that immense rapidity was manifested to the senses only by
looking at the objects passed.”
At Manchester I find myself to have been much scandalised at a scene
which I witnessed in the Collegiate Church there. There were seventeen
couples to be married, and they were all married at once, the only part
of the service individually performed being the “I take thee,” &c. &c. I
perfectly well remember at this distance of time the bustling about of
the clerk among them to insure that every male should be coupled to the
right female. “After this wholesale coupling had been completed,” says
my diary, “the daily service was begun, and was performed in a more
indecent and slovenly way than I ever before witnessed, which is saying
a great deal! While the Psalms were being sung the priest, as having
nothing to do, walked out, and returned just in time to read the
Lessons.” Such were the manners and habits of 1832.
A few weeks later I find an entry to the effect that, “while my father
was reading _Grandison_ to us in the evening I got M. Hervieu (the
artist who did the illustrations for my mother’s _Domestic Manners of
the Americans_ and other books, and who chanced to be passing the
evening with us _en famille_) to draw me a caricature illustrating the
following passage of Beattie’s _Minstrel_:--
“And yet young Edwin was no vulgar boy;
Deep thought would often fix his youthful eye.
Dainties he heeded not, nor gaud, nor toy,
Save _one short pipe_!”
I possess this remarkable work of art to the present day!
At another page I stumble on the record of a conversation with the
sexton of Leatherhead, whom, in one of my rambles, I found digging a
grave in the churchyard there. Three shillings, I learned, was the price
of a grave of the ordinary depth of five feet. Those, however, who could
afford the luxury of lying deeper paid a shilling a foot more.
One more note from the diaries of those days I will venture to give,
because it may be taken as a paraleipomenon to that _Autobiography_ of
my brother, which the world was kindly pleased to take some interest
in:--
“Went to town yesterday [from Harrow], and among other commissions
bought a couple of single-sticks with strong basket handles. Anthony
much approves of them, and this morning we had a bout with them. One of
the sticks bought yesterday soon broke, and we supplied its place by a
tremendous blackthorn. Neither of us left the arena without a fair share
of rather severe wales; but Anthony is far my superior in quickness and
adroitness, and perhaps in bearing pain too. I fear he is likely to
remain so in the first two, but in the third I am determined he shall
not.”
Thus says the yellow fifty-seven-year-old page!
And I have literally thousands of such pages; voluminous records--among
other matters--of walking excursions in the home counties, in Devon, in
Wales, in Gloucestershire, and the banks of the Severn and Wye, not a
page of which fails to bear its testimony to the curiously changed
circumstances under which a pedestrian would now undertake such
wanderings. I find among other jottings--deemed _memorabilia_ at the
time--that I carried a knapsack weighing twenty-eight pounds over the
top of Plinlimmon, because I considered seven and sixpence demanded by
the guide for accompanying me, excessive.
But _ohe! jam satis_. I will inflict no more upon the patient
reader--the impatient will have skipped much of what I have already
given him.
Alas! the _amari aliquid_ of these old records is the unblushing
chronicle of _intentions_, enough to have paved all Acheron with a
durability unachieved by any highway board! The only comfort for
diarists so imprudently candid as to record such aspirations, and so yet
more imprudent as to read them half a century after the penning of them,
is the consideration that _au bout des comptes_ the question is, not
what one has done, but what one has become. If one could flatter oneself
that one has the _mens sana in corpore sano_ at seventy-seven years,
one might accept and condone the past without too much regret; and at
all events it is something to have undeniably brought the latter to its
seventy-eighth year.