Rural Rides — Kentish Journal

KENTISH JOURNAL: FROM KENSINGTON TO DARTFORD, ROCHESTER, CHATHAM, AND FAVERSHAM.

_Tuesday, December 4, 1821, Elverton Farm, near Faversham, Kent.

_ This is the first time, since I went to France, in 1792, that I have been on this side of _Shooters' Hill_.

The land, generally speaking, from Deptford to Dartford is poor, and the surface ugly by nature, to which ugliness there has been made, just before we came to the latter place, a considerable addition by the enclosure of a common, and by the sticking up of some shabby-genteel houses, surrounded with dead fences and things called gardens, in all manner of ridiculous forms, making, all together, the bricks, hurdle-rods and earth say, as plainly as they can speak, "Here dwell _vanity_ and _poverty_."

This is a little excrescence that has grown out of the immense sums which have been drawn from other parts of the kingdom to be expended on Barracks, Magazines, Martello-Towers, Catamarans, and all the excuses for lavish expenditure which the war for the Bourbons gave rise to.

All things will return;

these rubbishy flimsy things, on this common, will first be deserted, then crumble down, then be swept away, and the cattle, sheep, pigs and geese will once more graze upon the common, which will again furnish heath, furze and turf for the labourers on the neighbouring lands.

--After you leave Dartford the land becomes excellent.

You come to a bottom of chalk, many feet from the surface, and when that is the case the land is sure to be good; no _wet_ at bottom, no deep ditches, no water furrows necessary; sufficiently moist in dry weather, and no water lying about upon it in wet weather for any length of time.

The chalk acts as a filtering-stone, not as a sieve, like gravel, and not as a dish, like clay.

The chalk acts as the soft stone in Herefordshire does;

but it is not so congenial to trees that have tap-roots.

--Along through Gravesend towards Rochester the country presents a sort of gardening scene.

Rochester (the Bishop of which is, or lately was, _tax Collector for London and Middlesex_) is a small but crowded place, lying on the south bank of the beautiful Medway, with a rising ground on the other side of the city.

_Stroud_, which you pass through before you come to the bridge, over which you go to enter Rochester; _Rochester_ itself, and _Chatham_, form, in fact, one main street of about two miles and a half in length.

--Here I was got into the scenes of my cap-and-feather days!

Here, at between sixteen and seventeen, I enlisted for a soldier.

Upon looking up towards the fortifications and the barracks, how many recollections crowded into my mind!

The girls in these towns do not seem to be _so pretty_ as they were thirty-eight years ago; or, am I not so quick in discovering beauties as I was then?

Have thirty-eight years corrected my taste, or made me a hypercritic in these matters?

Is it that I now look at them with the solemnness of a "professional man," and not with the enthusiasm and eagerness of an "amateur?"

I leave these questions for philosophers to solve.

One thing I will say for the young women of these towns, and that is, that I always found those of them that I had the great happiness to be acquainted with, evince a sincere desire to do their best to smooth the inequalities of life, and to give us, "brave fellows," as often as they could, strong beer, when their churlish masters of fathers or husbands would have drenched us to death with small.

This, at the out-set of life, gave me a high opinion of the judgment and justice of the female sex; an opinion which has been confirmed by the observations of my whole life.

--This Chatham has had some monstrous _wens_ stuck on to it by the lavish expenditure of the war.

These will moulder away.

It is curious enough that I should meet with a gentleman in an inn at Chatham to give me a picture of the house-distress in that enormous wen, which, during the war, was stuck on to Portsmouth.

Not less than fifty thousand people had been drawn together there!

These are now dispersing.

The coagulated blood is diluting and flowing back through the veins.

Whole streets are deserted, and the eyes of the houses knocked out by the boys that remain.

The jackdaws, as much as to say, "Our turn to be inspired and to teach is come," are beginning to take possession of the Methodist chapels.

The gentleman told me that he had been down to Portsea to sell half a street of houses, left him by a relation; and that nobody would give him anything for them further than as very cheap fuel and rubbish!

Good God!

And is this "prosperity?"

Is this the "prosperity of the war?"

Have I not, for twenty long years, been regretting the existence of these unnatural embossments; these white-swellings, these odious wens, produced by _Corruption_ and engendering crime and misery and slavery?

We shall see the whole of these wens abandoned by the inhabitants, and, at last, the cannons on the fortifications may be of some use in battering down the buildings.

--But what is to be the fate of the great wen of all?

The monster called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, "the metropolis of the empire"?

What is to become of that multitude of towns that has been stuck up around it?

The village of Kingston was smothered in the town of Portsea; and why?

Because taxes, drained from other parts of the kingdom, were brought thither.

The dispersion of the wen is the only real difficulty that I see in settling the affairs of the nation and restoring it to a happy state.

But dispersed it _must_ be; and if there be half a million, or more, of people to suffer, the consolation is, that the suffering will be divided into half a million of parts.

As if the swelling out of London, naturally produced by the Funding System, were not sufficient; as if the evil were not sufficiently great from the inevitable tendency of the system of loans and funds, our pretty gentlemen must resort to positive institutions to augment the population of the Wen.

They found that the increase of the Wen produced an increase of thieves and prostitutes, an increase of all sorts of diseases, an increase of miseries of all sorts;

they saw that taxes drawn up to one point produced these effects; they must have a "_penitentiary_," for instance, to check the evil, and that they must needs have in the Wen!

So that here were a million of pounds, drawn up in taxes, employed not only to keep the thieves and prostitutes still in the _Wen_, but to bring up to the Wen workmen to build the penitentiary, who and whose families, amounting, perhaps, to thousands, make an addition to the cause of that crime and misery, to check which is the object of the Penitentiary!

People would follow, they must follow, the million of money.

However, this is of a piece with all the rest of their goings on.

They and their predecessors, Ministers and _House_, have been collecting together all the materials for a dreadful explosion; and if the explosion be not dreadful, other heads must point out the means of prevention.

_Wednesday, 5 Dec.

_ The land on quitting Chatham is chalk at bottom; but before you reach Sittingbourne there is a vein of gravel and sand under, but a great depth of loam above.

About Sittingbourne the chalk bottom comes again, and continues on to this place, where the land appears to me to be as good as it can possibly be.

Mr. WILLIAM WALLER, at whose house I am, has grown, this year, Mangel-Wurzel, the roots of which weigh, I think, on an average, twelve pounds, and in rows, too, at only about thirty inches distant from each other.

In short, as far as _soil_ goes, it is impossible to see a finer country than this.

You frequently see a field of fifty acres, level as a die, clean as a garden and as rich.

Mr. _Birkbeck_ need not have crossed the Atlantic, and Alleghany into the bargain, to look for land _too rich to bear wheat_; for here is a plenty of it.

In short, this is a country of hop-gardens, cherry, apple, pear and filbert orchards, and quick-set hedges.

But, alas!

what, in point of _beauty_, is a country without woods and lofty trees!

And here there are very few indeed.

I am now sitting in a room, from the window of which I look, _first_, over a large and level field of rich land, in which the drilled wheat is finely come up, and which is surrounded by clipped quickset hedges with a row of apple trees running by the sides of them; _next_, over a long succession of rich meadows, which are here called marshes, the shortest grass upon which will fatten sheep or oxen;

_next_, over a little branch of the salt water which runs up to Faversham; _beyond that_, on the Isle of Shepry (or Shepway), which rises a little into a sort of ridge that runs along it; rich fields, pastures and orchards lie all around me; and yet, I declare, that I a million times to one prefer, as a spot to _live on_, the heaths, the miry coppices, the wild woods and the forests of Sussex and Hampshire.

_Thursday, 6 Dec.

_ "Agricultural distress" is the great topic of general conversation.

The _Webb Hallites_ seem to prevail here.

The fact is, farmers in general read nothing but the newspapers; these, in the Wen, are under the control of the Corruption of one or the other of the factions; and in the country, nine times out of ten, under the control of the parsons and landlords, who are the magistrates, as they are pompously called, that is to say, Justices of the Peace.

From such vehicles what are farmers to learn?

They are, in general, thoughtful and sensible men; but their natural good sense is perverted by these publications, had it not been for which we never should have seen "_a sudden transition from war to peace_" lasting seven years, and more _sudden_ in its destructive effects at last than at first.

_Sir Edward Knatchbull_ and _Mr.

Honeywood_ are the members of the "Collective Wisdom" for this county.

The former was, till of late, a _Tax-Collector_.

I hear that he is a great advocate for _corn-bills_!

I suppose he does not wish to let people who have _leases_ see the bottom of the evil.

He may get his rents for this year; but it will be his last year, if the interest of the Debt be not very greatly reduced.

Some people here think that corn is _smuggled in_ even now!

Perhaps it is, _upon the whole_, best that the delusion should continue for a year longer; as that would tend to make the destruction of the system more sure, or, at least, make the cure more radical.

_Friday, 7 Dec.

_ I went through _Faversham_.

A very pretty little town, and just ten minutes' walk from the market-place up to the Dover turnpike-road.

Here are the _powder-affairs_ that Mr. HUME so well exposed.

An immensity of buildings and expensive things.

Why are not these premises let or sold?

However, this will never be done until there be a _reformed Parliament_.

Pretty little VAN, that beauty of all beauties; that orator of all orators; that saint of all saints; that financier of all financiers, said that if Mr. HUME were to pare down the expenses of government to _his_ wish, there would be others "the Hunts, Cobbetts, and Carliles, who would still want the expense to be less."

I do not know _how low_ Mr. Hume would wish to go; but for myself I say that if I ever have the power to do it, I will reduce the expenditure, and that in quick time too, down to what it was in the reign of Queen Anne; that is to say, to less than is now paid to tax-gatherers for their labour in collecting the taxes; and, monstrous as VAN may think the idea, I do not regard it as impossible that I may have such power; which I would certainly not employ to do an act of _injustice_ to any human being, and would, at the same time, maintain the throne in more real splendour than that in which it is now maintained.

But I would have nothing to do with any VANS, except as door-keepers or porters.

_Saturday, 8 Dec.

_ Came home very much pleased with my visit to Mr. WALKER, in whose house I saw no drinking of wine, spirits, or even beer; where all, even to the little children, were up by candle-light in the morning, and where the most perfect sobriety was accompanied by constant cheerfulness.

_Kent_ is in a deplorable way.

The farmers are skilful and intelligent, generally speaking.

But there is infinite _corruption_ in Kent, owing partly to the swarms of West Indians, Nabobs, Commissioners, and others of nearly the same description, that have selected it for the place of their residence; but owing still more to the immense sums of public money that have, during the last thirty years, been expended in it.

And when one thinks of these, the conduct of the people of Dover, Canterbury, and other places, in the case of the ever-lamented Queen, does them everlasting honour.

The _fruit_ in Kent is more _select_ than in Herefordshire, where it is raised for _cyder_, while, in Kent, it is raised for sale in its fruit state, a great deal being sent to the _Wen_, and a great deal sent to the North of England and to Scotland.

The orchards are beautiful indeed.

Kept in the neatest order, and, indeed, all belonging to them excels anything of the kind to be seen in Normandy; and as to apples, I never saw any so good in France as those of Kent.

This county, so blessed by Providence, has been cursed by the System in a peculiar degree.

It has been the _receiver_ of immense sums, raised on the other counties.

This has puffed its _rents_ to an unnatural height; and now that the drain of other counties is stopped, it feels like a pampered pony turned out in winter to live upon a common.

It is in an extremely "unsatisfactory state," and has certainly a greater mass of suffering to endure than any other part of the kingdom, the _Wens_ only excepted.

Sir EDWARD KNATCHBULL, who is a child of the System, does appear to see no more of the cause of these sufferings than if he were a baby.

How should he?

Not very bright by nature; never listening but to one side of the question; being a man who wants high rents to be paid him; not gifted with much light, and that little having to strive against prejudice, false shame, and self interest, what wonder is there that he should not see things in their true light?

NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK JOURNAL.