 | The works of Washington Irving |  |
TRAVELLING.
To see the country would a journey take
Some dozen mile, or very little more;
Taking his leave with friends two months before,
With driaking healths, and shaking by the hand,
As he had travail'd to some new-found land.
Doctor Merrie-Man, 1609.
The squire has lately received another
shock in the saddle, and been almost
unseated by his marplot neighbour, the
indefatigable Mr. Faddy, who rides his
jog-trot hobby with equal zeal; and is
so bent upon improving and reforming
the neighbourhood, that the squire thinks,
in a little while, it will be scarce worth
living in. The enormity that has just
discomposed my worthy host, is an attempt
of the manufacturer to have a line
of coaches established, that shall diverge
from the old route, and pass through the
neighbouring village.
I believe I have mentioned that the
Hall is situated in a retired part of the
country, at a distance from any great
coach-road; insomuch that the arrival
of a traveller is apt to make every one
look out of the window, and to cause
some talk among the ale-drinkers at the
little inn. I was at a loss, therefore, to
account for the squire's indignation at a
measure apparently fraught with convenience
and advantage, until I found
that the conveniences of travelling were
among his greatest grievances.
In fact, he rails against stage-coaches,
postchaises, and turnpike-roads, as serious
causes of the corruption of English
rural manners. They have given facilities,
he says, to every hum-drum citizen
to trundle his family about the
kingdom, and have sent the follies and
fashions of town whirling, in coachloads,
to the remotest parts of the island.
The whole country, he says, is traversed
by these flying cargoes; every by-road
is explored by enterprising tourists from
Cheapside and the Poultry, and every
gentleman's park and lawns invaded by
cockney sketchers of both sexes, with
portable chairs and portfolios for drawing.
He laments over this as destroying
the charm of privacy, and interrupting
the quiet of country life; but more especially
as affecting the simplicity of the
peasantry, and filling their heads with
half-city notions. A great coach-inn,
he says, is enough to ruin the manners
of a whole village. It creates a horde
of sots and idlers; makes gapers and
gazers and news-mongers of the common
people, and knowing jockeys of the
country bumpkins.
The squire has something of the old
feudal feeling. He looks back with
regret to the "good old times," when
journeys were only made on horseback,
and the extraordinary difficulties of travelling,
owing to bad roads, bad accommodations,
and highway robbers, seemed
to separate each village and hamlet from
the rest of the world. The lord of the
manor was then a kind of monarch in
the little realm around him. He held
his court in his paternal hall, and was
looked up to with almost as much loyalty
and deference as the king himself. Every
neighbourhood was a little world within
itself, having its local manners and
customs, its local history, and local
opinions. The inhabitants were fonder
of their homes, and thought less of wandering.
It was looked upon as an expedition
to travel out of sight of the parish-steeple;
and a man that had been to
London was a v