Читать книгу The Rural Life of England - William Howitt - Страница 13

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Before closing this department of my work, I must just glance at a few occurrences which serve to give an occasional variety to rural life, and may be classed under the head of Country Excitements. These are races, race-balls, county-balls, concerts, musical festivals, elections, assizes, and confirmations. It will not be requisite to do more than merely mention the greater part of these, for, to describe at length the race-ball and county-balls, the winter concerts of the county town and the musical festivals, would require a separate volume, and they indeed, after all, belong more to the town than to the country. Having, therefore, simply pointed them out as sources of occasional variety to wealthy families during their stay in the country, I shall confine myself in these concluding remarks, to those few particulars which belong more entirely to my subject. Balls and musical exhibitions are sufficiently alike everywhere, to need no distinct details here. It is enough that they serve to break the rural torpor of those who regard existence as only genuine during the London season. The application of the profits both of these balls, and of the musical festivals that have of late years been held in different places, to the support of infirmaries, and to other public objects of benevolence, deserves the highest commendation. Thus dismissing these amusements, neither I nor my readers, I am sure, would wish to have the uproar and exasperation of the county election introduced into this peaceful volume; enough that when it does come to the country Hall, it comes, often as a hurricane, and frequently shakes it to the foundation, leaving in its track debts and mortgages, shyness between neighbours, and rancour amongst old friends.

It would not be giving a faithful view of country life, however, were we to keep out of sight all agitating causes, and all existing drawbacks to the felicity for which such ample materials exist in it. Surveying those splendid materials, as displayed in the preceding chapters,—those abundant means and opportunities, which the wealthy possess for enjoying their lives in the country;—it would be giving a most one-sided view of the rural life of the rich, if we left it to be inferred that “the trail of the serpent” was not to be perceived at times on the fair lawns, and up the marble steps of rural palaces; that the great “Bubbly-Jock,” (Turkey-Cock) which Scott contended that every man found in his path did not shew himself there. The Serpent and the Bubbly-Jock which disturb and poison the rural life of the educated classes in England, are the very same which dash with bitter all English society in the same classes. They are the pride of life, and the pride of the eye. They are that continual struggle for precedence, and those jealousies which are generated by a false social system. Every man lives now-a-day for public observation. He builds his house, and organizes his establishment, so as to strike public opinion as much as possible. Every man is at strife with his neighbour in the matter of worldly greatness. The consequence is, that a false standard of estimation, both of men and things, is established—shew is substituted for real happiness; and no man is valued for his moral or intellectual qualities, so much as for the grandeur of his house, the style of his equipage, the richness of his dinner service, and the heavy extravagance of his dinners. The result of this is, that most are living to the full extent of their means, many beyond it, and few are finding, in the whole round of their life, that alone, which better and higher natures seek—the interchange of heart and mind, which yields present delight, creates permanent attachments, and fills the memory with enduring satisfaction.

This, it must be confessed, is a wretched state of things; but it is one which every person conversant with society knows to exist, and which intelligent foreigners witness with unfeigned surprise. The worst of it is that this unnatural system of life becomes the most sensibly felt in the country. In large towns every man finds a sufficient circle after his own taste: there the petty influences of locality are broken up by the multitude of objects, and the ample choice in association. But in small towns, and country neighbourhoods, where wealthy or educated families are thinly scattered, nothing can be more lamentable, and, were it not lamentable, nothing could be more ludicrous, than the state of rivalry, heart-burning, jealousy, personal mortification, or personal pride, from mere accidents of condition or favour. The titled have a fixed rank, and are comparatively at their ease, but in the great mass of those who have wealth, more or less, without title, what a mighty and eating sore is the struggle for distinction. In the little town, or thinly-scattered neighbourhood, every one is measuring out his imaginary dignity to see if it does not exceed, at least by some inches, that of one or other of his neighbours. The lower you descend in the scale, the more exacting becomes the spirit of exclusiveness. The professions look down upon the trades; the trades on one another. Everywhere the same uneasy spirit shews itself. Nothing can be more ludicrous, or amusing to the philosophic spectator, than to observe how leadership is assumed in every country neighbourhood by certain wealthy families; how carefully that leadership is avoided and opposed by other families. How the majority of families aspire to move in one or the other circle; what wretched and anomalous animals those feel themselves that are not recognised by either. How the man who drives his close carriage looks down upon him who only drives his barouche or phaeton; how both contemn the poor occupier of a gig. I have heard of a gentleman of large fortune who, for some years after his residence in a particular neighbourhood, did not set up his close carriage, but afterwards feeling it more agreeable to do so, was astonished to find himself called upon by a host of carriage-keeping people, who did not seem previously aware of his existence; and rightly deeming the calls to be made upon his carriage, rather than himself, sent round his empty carriage to deliver cards in return. It was a biting satire on a melancholy condition of society, the full force of which can only be perceived by such as have heard the continual exultations of those who have dined with such a great person on such a day, and the equally eager complaints of others, of the pride and exclusiveness they meet with; who have listened to the long catalogue of slights, dead cuts, and offences, and witnessed the perpetual heart-burnings incident to such a state of things. These are the follies that press the charm of existence out of the hearts of thousands, and make the country often a purgatory where it might be a paradise.

There is another cause which diminishes in a great degree the enjoyment that might be found in the country, and that is, the almost total cessation of walking amongst the wealthy. Since the universal use of carriages, for anything I can see, thousands of people might just as well be born without legs at all. It would be easy to move them from the bed to the carriage,—thence to the dinner-table, and again to bed. In the country, and especially in the country not far from towns, how rarely do you see the rich except in their luxurious carriages! How rarely do you meet them walking, or even on horseback, as you used to do! Sir Roger de Coverley rode on horseback to the assizes in his day—were he living now, he would roll there in his carriage—lest some one should imagine that he had mortgaged his estate, and laid down his carriage in retrenchment. During the twelve months that I have resided in this neighbourhood—a neighbourhood studded all over with wealthy houses, nothing has surprised me, and the friends who have visited me here, so much as the great rarity of seeing any of the wealthy classes on their legs. With the exception of the Queen and her attendant ladies, who during the then Princess’s abode at Claremont, might be every day met in the winter, walking in frost and snow, and facing the sharpest winds of the sharpest weather, I scarcely remember to have met half-a-dozen of the wealthy classes on foot a mile from their residences. And yet what splendid, airy heaths, what delicious woods, what nooks of bowery foliage, what views into far landscapes, are there all around! It is true, as some of them have observed, that they walk in their own grounds; but what grounds, however beautiful, can compensate for the fresh feeling of the heath and the down; for the dim solemnity of the wild wood; for open, breezy hills, the winding lane, the sight of rustic cottages by the forest side, the tinkle of the herd or the sheep-bell, and all the wild sounds and aspects of earth and heaven, to be met with only in the free regions of nature? They who neglect to walk, or confine their strolls merely to the lawn and the shrubbery, lose nine-tenths of the enjoyment of the country. Those young men, whom it is a pleasure to see with their knapsacks on their backs ranging over moor and mountain, by lake or ocean, in Scotland or Wales, taste more of the life of life in a few summer months than many dwellers in the country ever dream of through their whole existence. I speak advisedly, for I traverse the country in all directions, let me be where I will; and if any ladies think themselves too delicate for walking, I can point them out delicate ladies too that have made excursions on foot through mountain regions of five hundred miles at a time, and recur to those seasons as amongst the most delightful of their lives.

But my desire that all should make their country life as happy as it is capable of being made—which must be by living more to nature and less to fashion—by using both their physical and moral energies; by respecting themselves, and leaving the respect of others to follow as the natural result of a true and pure tone of spirit—is detaining me too long. I must hasten on; and amongst the most prominent of the country excitements, give a passing word to racing. If any one wishes to know how far the turf influences the course of country life, he has only to read the following passage from Nimrod. “Deservedly high as Newmarket stands in the history of the British turf, it is but as a speck on the ocean when compared with the sum total of our provincial meetings, of which there are about one hundred and twenty in England, Scotland, and Wales—several of them twice in the year. Epsom, Ascot, York, Doncaster, and Goodwood, stand first in respect of the value of the prizes, the rank of the company, and the interest attached to them in the sporting world; although several other cities and towns have lately exhibited very tempting bills of fare to owners of good race-horses. In point of antiquity we believe the Roodee of Chester claims pre-eminence of all country race-meetings;—and certainly it has long been in high repute. Falling early in the racing year—always the first Monday in May—it is most numerously attended by the families of the extensive and very aristocratic neighbourhood in which it is placed; and always continues five days.”—The Turf, p. 246.

Every one who has seen the crowds of wealthy people who flock to a celebrated race-meeting, and throng the stand and the carriage stations, with brilliant dresses and gay equipages, may imagine, then, how much excitement is spread through that class of society during their stay in the country; by one hundred and twenty race-meetings in one quarter or other of the island; especially as the greater part of these occur during the months that they are absent from town. So having read the passage quoted from Nimrod, he has only to turn to the volume itself—a volume written with great ability; and, making allowance for the author’s sporting predilections, in an excellent spirit, and he will thus find that course described as such a horrible resort of blacklegs and desperadoes, of traitorous jockeys and poisoning trainers, as makes one at once recoil from the recital, and wonder that our young nobles and gentlemen should commit themselves and their fortunes to such hands; or that the fair and the refined should consent to gaze on such a scene of infamy. Hear Nimrod’s own words—“How many fine domains have been shared amongst these hosts of rapacious sharks, during the last two hundred years! and unless the system be altered—how many more are doomed to fall into the same gulf! For, we lament to say, the evil has increased; all heretofore, indeed, has been ‘tarts and cheesecakes’ to the villanous proceedings of the last twenty years on the English turf.” Let us move on to less repulsive scenes.