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.{222}” 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 herror to suppose that commercial men were hadverse 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 5s. 6d., 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{223} 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 5s.; in the others the fare was 3s. 6d. 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{224} 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{225} 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{226} 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{227} 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.
