Part 75

Since writing the above I have had an opportunity of receiving information from a very intelligent gentleman of this county, who tells me, that in Northumberland there are some lands which bear very heavy crops of wheat; that the agriculture in this county is a great deal better than it is farther south; that, however, it was a most lamentable thing that the paper-money price of corn tempted so many men to break up these fine pastures; that the turf thus destroyed cannot be restored probably in a whole century; that the land does not now, with present prices, yield a clear profit, anything like what it would have yielded in the pasture; and that thus was destroyed the _goose with the golden eggs_. Just so was it with regard to the _downs_ in the south and the west of England, where there are hundreds of thousands of acres, where the turf was the finest in the world, broken up for the sake of the paper-money prices, but now left to be _downs again_; and which will not be _downs_ for more than a century to come. Thus did this accursed paper-money cause even the fruitful qualities of the earth to be anticipated, and thus was the soil made _worth less_ than it was before the accursed invention appeared! This gentleman told me that this breaking up of the pasture-land in this country had made the land, though covered again with artificial grasses, unhealthy for sheep; and he gave as an instance the facts, that three farmers purchased a hundred and fifty sheep each, out of the same flock; that two of them, who put their sheep upon these recently broken-up lands, lost their whole flocks by the rot, with the exception of four in the one case and four in the other, out of the three hundred: and that the third farmer, who put his sheep upon the old pastures, and kept them there, lost not a single sheep out of the hundred and fifty! These, ever accursed paper-money, are amongst thy destructive effects!

I shall now, laying aside for the present these rural affairs, turn to the politics of this fine, opulent, solid, beautiful, and important town; but as this would compel me to speak of particular transactions and particular persons, and as this _Register_ will come back to Newcastle before I am likely to quit it, the reader will see reasons quite sufficient for my refraining to go into matters of this sort, until the next _Register_, which will in all probability be dated from Edinburgh.

While at Manchester, I received an invitation to lodge while here at the house of a friend, of whom I shall have to speak more fully hereafter; but every demonstration of respect and kindness met me at the door of the coach in which I came from Leeds, on Friday, the 21st September. In the early part of Saturday, the 22nd, a deputation waited upon me with _an address_. Let the readers, in my native county and parish, remember that I am now at the end of thirty years of calumnies poured out incessantly upon me from the poisonous mouths and pens of three hundred mercenary villains, called newspaper editors and reporters; that I have written and published more than a hundred volumes in those thirty years; and that more than a thousand volumes (chiefly paid for out of the taxes) have been written and published for the sole purpose of impeding the progress of those truths that dropped from my pen; that my whole life has been a life of sobriety and labour; that I have invariably shown that I loved and honoured my country, and that I preferred its greatness and happiness far beyond my own; that, at four distinct periods, I might have rolled in wealth derived from the public money, which I always refused on any account to touch; that, for having thwarted this Government in its wastefulness of the public resources, and particularly for my endeavours to produce that Reform of the Parliament which the Government itself has at last been compelled to resort to; that, for having acted this zealous and virtuous part, I have been twice stripped of all my earnings by the acts of this Government; once lodged in a felon's jail for two years, and once driven into exile for two years and a half; and that, after all, here I am on a spot within a hundred miles of which I never was before in my life; and here I am receiving the unsolicited applause of men amongst the most intelligent in the whole kingdom, and the names of some of whom have been pronounced accompanied with admiration, even to the southernmost edge of the kingdom.

_Hexham, 1st Oct., 1832._

I left Morpeth this morning pretty early, to come to this town, which lies on the banks of the Tyne, at thirty-four miles distant from Morpeth, and at twenty distant from Newcastle. Morpeth is a great market-town, for cattle especially. It is a solid old town; but it has the disgrace of seeing an enormous new jail rising up in it. From cathedrals and monasteries we are come to be proud of our jails, which are built in the grandest style, and seemingly as if to imitate the Gothic architecture.

From Morpeth to within about four miles of Hexham, the land is but very indifferent; the farms of an enormous extent. I saw in one place more than a hundred corn-stacks in one yard, each having from six to seven Surrey wagon-loads of sheaves in a stack; and not another house to be seen within a mile or two of the farmhouse. There appeared to be no such thing as barns, but merely a place to take in a stack at a time, and thrash it out by a machine. The country seems to be almost wholly destitute of people. Immense tracks of corn-land, but neither cottages nor churches. There is here and there a spot of good land, just as in the deep valleys that I crossed; but, generally speaking, the country is poor; and its bleakness is proved by the almost total absence of the oak tree, of which we see scarcely one all the way from Morpeth to Hexham. Very few trees of any sort, except in the bottom of the warm valleys; what there are, are chiefly the _ash_, which is a very hardy tree, and will live and thrive where the _oak_ will not grow at all, which is very curious, seeing that it comes out into leaf so late in the spring, and sheds its foliage so early in the fall. The trees which stand next in point of hardiness are the _sycamore_, the _beech_, and the _birch_, which are all seen here; but none of them fine. The _ash_ is the most common tree, and even it flinches upon the hills, which it never does in the South. It has generally become yellow in the leaf already; and many of the trees are now bare of leaf before any frost has made its appearance.

The cattle all along here are of a coarse kind; the cows swag-backed and badly shaped; Kiloe oxen, except in the dips of good land by the sides of the bourns which I crossed. Nevertheless, even here, the fields of turnips, of both sorts, are very fine. Great pains seem to be taken in raising the crops of these turnips: they are all cultivated in rows, are kept exceedingly clean, and they are carried in as winter food for all the animals of a farm, the horses excepted.

As I approached Hexham, which, as the reader knows, was formerly the seat of a famous abbey, and the scene of a not less famous battle, and was, indeed, at one time the _see_ of a bishop, and which has now churches of great antiquity and cathedral-like architecture; as I approached this town, along a valley down which runs a small river that soon after empties itself into the Tyne, the land became good, the ash trees more lofty, and green as in June; the other trees proportionably large and fine; and when I got down into the vale of Hexham itself, there I found the _oak_ tree, certain proof of a milder atmosphere; for the _oak_, though amongst the hardest _woods_, is amongst the tenderest of plants known as natives of our country. Here everything assumes a different appearance. The Tyne, the southern and northern branches of which meet a few miles above Hexham, runs close by this ancient and celebrated town, all round which the ground rises gradually away towards the hills, crowned here and there with the remains of those castles which were formerly found necessary for the defence of this rich and valuable valley, which, from tip of hill to tip of hill, varies, perhaps, from four to seven miles wide, and which contains as fine corn-fields as those of Wiltshire, and fields of turnips, of both kinds, the largest, finest, and best cultivated, that my eyes ever beheld. As a proof of the goodness of the land and the mildness of the climate here, there is, in the grounds of the gentleman who had the kindness to receive and to entertain me (and that in a manner which will prevent me from ever forgetting either him or his most amiable wife); there is, standing in his ground, _about an acre of my corn_, which will ripen perfectly well; and in the same grounds, which, together with the kitchen-garden and all the appurtenances belonging to a house, and the house itself, are laid out, arranged, and contrived, in a manner so judicious, and to me so original, as to render them objects of great interest, though, in general, I set very little value on the things which appertain merely to the enjoyments of the rich. In these same grounds (to come back again to the climate), I perceived that the rather tender evergreens not only lived but throve perfectly well, and (a criterion infallible) the _biennial stocks_ stand the winter without any covering or any pains taken to shelter them; which, as every one knows, is by no means always the case, even at Kensington and Fulham.

At night I gave a lecture at an inn, at Hexham, in the midst of the domains of that impudent and stupid man, Mr. Beaumont, who, not many days before, in what he called a speech, I suppose, made at Newcastle, thought proper, as was reported in the newspapers, to utter the following words with regard to me, never having, in his life, received the slightest provocation for so doing. "The liberty of the press had nothing to fear from the Government. It was the duty of the administration to be upon their guard to prevent extremes. There was a crouching servility on the one hand, and an excitement to disorganization and to licentiousness on the other, which ought to be discountenanced. The company, he believed, as much disapproved of that political traveller who was now going through the country--he meant Cobbett--as they detested the servile effusions of the Tories." Beaumont, in addition to his native stupidity and imbecility, might have been drunk when he said this, but the servile wretch who published it was not drunk; and, at any rate, Beaumont was my mark, it not being my custom to snap at the stick, but at the cowardly hand that wields it.

Such a fellow cannot be an object of what is properly called _vengeance_ with any man who is worth a straw; but, I say, with SWIFT, "If a _flea_ or a _bug_ bite me, I will kill it if I can;" and, acting upon that principle, I, being at Hexham, put my foot upon this contemptible creeping thing, who is offering himself as a candidate for the southern division of the county, being so eminently fitted to be a maker of the laws!

The newspapers have told the whole country that Mr. John Ridley, who is a tradesman at Hexham, and occupies some land close by, has made a stand against the demand for tithes; and that the tithe-owner recently broke open, in the night, the gate of his field, and carried away what he deemed to be the tithe; that Mr. Ridley applied to the magistrates, who could only refer him to a court of law to recover damages for the trespass. When I arrived at Hexham, I found this to be the case. I further found that Beaumont, that impudent, silly and slanderous Beaumont, is the _lay-owner_ of the tithes in and round about Hexham; he being, in a right line, doubtless, the heir or successor of the abbot and monks of the Abbey of Hexham; or, the heir of the donor, Egfrid, _king of Northumberland_. I found that Beaumont had leased out his tithes to _middle men_, as is the laudable custom with the pious bishops and clergy of the law-church in Ireland.

_North Shields, 2nd Oct., 1832._

These sides of the Tyne are very fine: corn-fields, woods, pastures, villages; a church every four miles, or thereabouts; cows and sheep beautiful; oak trees, though none very large; and, in short, a fertile and beautiful country, wanting only the gardens and the vine-covered cottages that so beautify the counties in the South and the West. All the buildings are of stone. Here are coal-works and railways every now and then. The working people seem to be very well off; their dwellings solid and clean, and their furniture good; but the little gardens and orchards are wanting. The farms are all large; and the people who work on them either live in the farmhouse, or in buildings appertaining to the farmhouse; and they are all well fed, and have no temptation to acts like those which sprang up out of the ill-treatment of the labourers in the South. Besides, the mere country people are so few in number, the state of society is altogether so different, that a man who has lived here all his life-time, can form no judgment at all with regard to the situation, the wants, and the treatment of the working people in the counties of the South.

They have begun to make a railway from Carlisle to Newcastle; and I saw them at work at it as I came along. There are great _lead mines_ not far from Hexham; and I saw a great number of little one-horse carts bringing down the _pigs of lead_ to the point where the Tyne becomes navigable to Newcastle; and sometimes I saw loads of these _pigs_ lying by the road-side, as you see parcels of timber lying in Kent and Sussex, and other timber counties. No fear of their being stolen: their weight is their security, together with their value compared with that of the labour of carrying. Hearing that Beaumont was, somehow or other, connected with this lead-work, I had got it into my head that he was a pig of lead himself, and half expected to meet with him amongst these groups of his fellow-creatures; but, upon inquiry, I found that some of the lead-mines belonged to him; descending, probably, in that same right line in _which the tithes descended to him_; and as the Bishop of Durham is said to be the owner of great lead-mines, Beaumont and the bishop may possibly be in the _same boat_ with regard to the subterranean estate as well as that upon the surface; and if this should be the case, it will, I verily believe, require all the piety of the bishop, and all the wisdom of Beaumont, to keep the boat above water for another five years.

_North Shields, 3rd Oct., 1832._

I lectured at South Shields last evening, and here this evening. I came over the river from South Shields about eleven o'clock last night, and made a very firm bargain with myself never to do the like again. This evening, after my lecture was over, some gentlemen presented an address to me upon the stage, before the audience, accompanied with the valuable and honourable present of the late Mr. Eneas Mackenzie's _History of the County of Northumberland_; a very interesting work, worthy of every library in the kingdom.

From Newcastle to Morpeth; from Morpeth to Hexham; and then all the way down the Tyne; though everywhere such abundance of fine turnips, and in some cases of mangel-wurzel, you see scarcely any _potatoes_: a certain sign that the working people do not live like hogs. This root is raised in Northumberland and Durham, to be used merely as garden stuff; and, used in that way, it is very good; the contrary of which I never thought, much less did I ever say it. It is the using of it as a _substitute_ for bread and for meat, that I have deprecated it; and when the Irish poet, Dr. Drennen, called it "the lazy root, and the root of misery," he gave it its true character. Sir Charles Wolseley, who has travelled a great deal in France, Germany and Italy, and who, though Scott-Eldon scratched him out of the commission of the peace, and though the sincere patriot Brougham will not put him in again, is a very great and accurate observer as to these interesting matters, has assured me that, in whatever proportion the cultivation of potatoes prevails in those countries, in that same proportion the working-people are wretched.

From this degrading curse; from sitting round a dirty board, with potatoes trundled out upon it, as the Irish do: from going to the field with cold potatoes in their bags, as the working-people of Hampshire and Wiltshire _did_, but which they have not done since the appearance of certain _coruscations_, which, to spare the feelings of the "Lambs, the Broughams, the Greys, and the Russells," and their dirty bill-of-indictment-drawer Denman, I will not describe, much less will I eulogize; from this degrading curse the county of Northumberland is yet happily free!

_Sunderland, 4th Oct., 1832._

This morning I left North Shields in a post-chaise, in order to come hither through Newcastle and Gateshead, this affording me the only opportunity that I was likely to have of seeing a plantation of Mr. Annorer Donkin, close in the neighbourhood of Newcastle; which plantation had been made according to the method prescribed in my book, called the "Woodlands;" and to see which plantation I previously communicated a request to Mr. Donkin. That gentleman received me in a manner which will want no describing to those who have had the good luck to visit Newcastle. The plantation is most advantageously circumstanced to furnish proof of the excellence of my instructions as to planting. The predecessor of Mr. Donkin also made plantations upon the same spot, and consisting precisely of the same sort of trees. The two plantations are separated from each other merely by a road going through them. Those of the predecessor have been made _six-and-twenty years_; those of Mr. Donkin _six years_; and, incredible as it may appear, the trees in the latter are full as lofty as those in the former; and, besides the equal loftiness, are vastly superior in point of shape, and, which is very curious, retain all their freshness at this season of the year, while the old plantations are brownish and many of the leaves falling off the trees, though the sort of trees is precisely the same. As a sort of reward for having thus contributed to this very rational source of his pleasure, Mr. Donkin was good enough to give me an elegant copy of the fables of the celebrated Bewick, who was once a native of Newcastle and an honour to the town, and whose books I had had from the time that my children began to look at books, until taken from me by that sort of rapine which I had to experience at the time of my memorable flight across the Atlantic, in order to secure the use of that long arm which I caused to reach them from Long Island to London.

In Mr. Donkin's kitchen-garden (my eyes being never closed in such a scene) I saw what I had never seen before in any kitchen-garden, and which it may be very useful to some of my readers to have described to them. _Wall-fruit_ is, when destroyed in the spring, never destroyed by _dry-cold_; but ninety-nine times out of a hundred, by wet-frosts, which descend always perpendicularly, and which are generally fatal if they come between the expansion of the blossom and the setting of the fruit; that is to say, if they come after the bloom is quite open, and before it has disentangled itself from the fruit. The great thing, therefore, in getting _wall-fruit_, is to keep off these frosts. The French make use of boards, in the neighbourhood of Paris, projecting from the tops of the walls and supported by poles; and some persons contrive to have curtains to come over the whole tree at night and to be drawn up in the morning. Mr. Donkin's walls have a top of stone; and this top, or cap, projects about eight inches beyond the face of the wall, which is quite sufficient to guard against the wet-frosts which always fall perpendicularly. This is a country of stone to be sure; but those who can afford to build walls for the purpose of having wall-fruit, can afford to cap them in this manner: to rear the wall, plant the trees, and then to save the expense of the cap, is really like the old proverbial absurdity, "of losing the ship for the sake of saving a pennyworth of tar."

At Mr. Donkin's I saw a portrait of Bewick, which is said to be a great likeness, and which, though imagination goes a great way in such a case, really bespeaks that simplicity, accompanied with that genius, which distinguished the man. Mr. Wm. Armstrong was kind enough to make me a present of a copy of the last performance of this so justly celebrated man. It is entitled "_Waits for Death_," exhibiting a poor old horse just about to die, and preceded by an explanatory writing, which does as much honour to the heart of Bewick as the whole of his designs put together do to his genius. The sight of the picture, the reading of the preface to it, and the fact that it was the last effort of the man; altogether make it difficult to prevent tears from starting from the eyes of any one not uncommonly steeled with insensibility.