Departure from London.—West Kennet.—Use of the Words Horse and Dog.—Bath.—Ralph Allen.—The Parades.—Beau Nash.—Turnspits.
The last day of my abode in London was the most painful of my life. To part from dear friends, even for a transitory absence, is among the evils of life; but to leave them with a certainty of never meeting again, was a grief which I had never till now endured. Sixteen months had I been domesticated with J., as if I had been a brother of the family. When the children, as they went to bed last night, came to kiss me for the last time, I wished I had never seen them, and all night I remained wakeful—not in that state of feverish startlishness which the expectation of an early call occasions, but in melancholy thoughts and unavailing regret, which all the recollections of my own country, and my father's house, could not dissipate. Never shall I remember my friends in England without gratitude and love.
The coach was to start at five. I was ready at four, expecting the 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.
*****
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, [Greek: 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.
