Chapter 18

The ground served them for a table, and the grass for a table-cloth. The mixture of their viands with dirty rags, and other disgusting objects, proved that they possess no sentiment, in regard to cleanliness, superior to lower animals. Like philosophical chemists, they evidently admitted the elementary analogy of what the delicate sense of society classes under contrasted heads of _dirty_ and _clean_. Necessity, in this respect, has generated fixed habits; and they are, consequently, as great strangers to the refined feeling which actuates cleanly housewives, as lawyers are to a spirit of benevolence, or ministers of state to a passion for reform. Their furniture consisted merely of some dirty rags and blankets, and of two or three bags, baskets, and boxes; while their tents were formed of a pole at each end, with a ridge pole, covered with blanketing, which was stretched obliquely to the ground by wooden pegs. Such rudeness, and such simplicity, afforded a striking contrast to the gorgeous array of oriental splendour in the palaces of Royalty; and to the varied magnificence displayed in those warehouses whence an Oakley, or a Bullock, supplies the mansions of wealth and grandeur.

Indeed, as I stood conversing with these people, how could I help marvelling that, in the most polished district of the most civilized of nations, with the grand pagoda of Kew-Gardens in full view on one hand, and the towers of the new Bastile Palace in sight on the other, I should thus have presented under my eyes a family of eleven persons in no better condition than the Hottentots in their kraals, the Americans in their wigwams, or the Tartars in their equally rude tents. I sighed, however, to think that difference of natural constitution and varied propensities were in England far from being the only causes of the proximity of squalid misery to ostentatious pomp. I felt too that the manners of these gipsies were assimilated to those of the shepherd tribes of the remotest antiquity, and that in truth I saw before me a family of the pastoral ages, as described in the Book of Genesis. They wanted their flocks and herds; but the possession of these neither accorded with their own policy, nor with that of the country in which they reside. Four dogs attached to their tents, and two asses grazing at a short distance, completed such a grouping as a painter would, I have no doubt, have found in the days of Abraham in every part of Western Asia, and as is now to be found among the same people, at this day, in every country in Europe. They exhibit that state of man in which thousands of years might pass away without record or improvement: and, whether they are Egyptians, Arabs, Hindoos, Tartars, or a peculiar variety of our species; whether they exhibit man in the rude state which, according to Lord Montboddo, most nearly approximates to the ourang-outang of the oriental forests; or whether they are considered in their separated character--they form an interesting study for the philosopher, the economist, and the antiquary.

In a few minutes after I had left the gipsy camp, I was overtaken by a girl of fifteen, the quickness of whose breathing indicated excessive alarm. "O, sir," said she, "I'm so glad to come up with you--I'm so frightened--I've been standing this quarter of an hour on the other side of the stile, waiting for somebody to come by."--"And what has so frightened you?" said I.--"O, sir," said the still terrified girl, looking behind her, and increasing her pace, "those gipsies and witches--they frighten every body; and I wo'dn't have come this way for all the world if I'd known they'd been there."--"But," said I, "what are you frightened at? have you heard that they have done harm to any one?"--"O dear! yes, sir, I've heard my mother say they bewitches people; and, one summer, two of them beat my father dreadfully."--"But what did he do to them?"--"Why, he was a little tipsy, to be sure; but he says he only called 'em a pack of fortune-tellers."--"And are all the children in this neighbourhood as much frightened at them as you?"--"O yes, sir; but some of the boys throw stones over the hedge at them, but we girls are afraid they'll bewitch us. Did you see the old hag, sir?" The poor girl asked this question with such simplicity, and with a faith so confirmed, that I had reason once more to feel astonishment at the superstition which infests and disgraces the common people of this generally enlightened nation! Let me hope that the tutors in the schools of Bell and Lancaster will consider it as part of their duties, to destroy the vulgar faith in ghosts, omens, fortune-telling, fatality, and witchcraft.

On my right, my attention was attracted by the battlements of a new Gothic building, which I learnt, from the keeper of an adjoining turnpike, was called #Kew Priory#, and is a summer retreat of a wealthy Catholic maiden lady, Miss Doughty, of Richmond-Hill; after whom a street has recently been named in London. Learning that the lady was not there, I turned aside to take a nearer view; and, ringing at the gate, in the hope of seeing the interior, a female, who opened it, told me that it was a rule of the place, that _no man_ could be admitted besides the Rev. Mr. ----, the Catholic priest. I learnt that the Priory, a beautiful structure on a lawn, consisted merely of a chapel, a room for refreshments, and a library; and that the lady used it for a change of scene in the long afternoons of the summer season. The enclosed space contained about 24 acres, on the banks of the Thames, and is subdivided by Pilton's invisible fences. Behind the priory, there is a house for the bailiff and his wife, a capacious pheasantry, an aviary, and extensive stables. Nothing can be more tasteful as a place of indulgence for the luxury of wealth; but it is exposed to the inconvenience of floods from the river, which sometimes cover the entire site to a considerable depth.

Another quarter of a mile, along a dead flat, brought me upon #Kew-Green#. As I approached it, the woods of Kew and Richmond Gardens presented a varied and magnificent foliage, and the pagoda of ten stories rose in splendour out of the woods. Richmond-hill bounded the horizon on the left, and the smoky atmosphere of Brentford obscured the air beyond the houses on Kew-Green.

As I quitted the lane, I beheld, on my left, the long boundary-wall of Kew-Gardens; on which a disabled sailor has drawn in chalk the effigies of the whole British navy, and over each representation appears the name of the vessel, and the number of her guns. He has in this way depicted about 800 vessels, each five or six feet long, and extending, with intervening distances, above a mile and a half. As the labour of one man, the whole is an extraordinary performance; and I was told the decrepit draughtsman derives a competency from passing travellers.

#Kew-Green# is a triangular area of about thirty acres. Nearly in the centre is the chapel of St. Anne. On the eastern side is a row of family houses; on the north-western side a better row, the backs of which look to the Thames; and on the south side stand the boundary-wall of Kew-Gardens, some buildings for soldiery, and the plain house of Ernest, duke of Cumberland. Among other persons of note and interest who reside here, are the two respectable daughters of Stephen Duck, the poet, who deserve to be mentioned as relics of a former age. In the western corner stand the buildings called Kew Palace, in which George III. passed many of the early years of his reign, and near which he began a new structure a few years before his confirmed malady--which I call the _Bastile Palace_, from its resemblance to that building, so obnoxious to freedom and freemen. On a former occasion, I have viewed its interior, and I am at loss to conceive the motive for preferring an external form, which rendered it impracticable to construct within it more than a series of large closets, boudoirs, and rooms like oratories. The works have, however, been suspended since the unhappy seclusion of the Royal Architect; and it is improbable, at least in this generation, that they will be resumed. The foundation is in a bog close to the Thames, and the principal object within its view is the dirty town of Brentford, on the opposite side of the river.

I had intended to prolong my route to the western corner of the Green; but, in passing St. Anne's Chapel, I found the pew-openers engaged in wiping the pews and washing the aisles. I knew that that child of Genius, #Gainsborough#, the painter, lay interred here; and, desirous of paying my homage to his grave, I inquired for the spot. As is usual in regard to this class of people, they could give me no information; yet one of them fancied she had heard such a name before. I was therefore obliged to wait while the sexton or clerk was fetched, and in the interim I walked into the chapel. I was, in truth, well re-paid for the time it cost me; for I never saw any thing prettier, except Lord Le Despencer's exquisite structure at West Wycombe. As the royal family usually attend here when they reside at Kew, it is superbly fitted up, and the architecture is in the best taste. The seats for the family fill the gallery, and on the ground-floor there are forty-eight pews of brown oak, adapted for four and six persons each. Several marble monuments of singular beauty adorn the walls; but the record of a man of genius absorbed every attraction of ordinary rank and title. It was a marble slab, to the memory of #Meyer#, the painter,--with lines by the amiable poet, #Hayley#; and I was led, by respect for painter and poet, to copy the whole:--

#Jeremiah Meyer#, R.A. Painter in Miniature and Enamel to his Majesty Geo. III. Died January 19, 1789.

Meyer! in thy works, the world will ever see How great the loss of Art in losing thee; But Love and Sorrow find the words too weak, Nature's keen sufferings on thy death to speak; Through all her duties, what a heart was thine; In thy cold dust what spirit used to shine! Fancy, and truth, and gaiety, and zeal, What most we love in life, and, losing, feel; Age after age may not one artist yield Equal to thee, in Painting's ample field; And ne'er shall sorrowing Earth to Heaven commend A fonder parent, or a firmer friend.

_William Hayley_, 1789.

From hence I strolled into the vestry, where I found a table of fees, drawn with a degree of precision which merits imitation. It appears, that the fees for #MARRIAGES# with a licence are 10_s._ 6_d._, and by banns 5_s._ That those for #BURIALS#, to the minister, if the prayers are said in the church, are 5_s._; if only at the grave, 2_s._ 6_d._ The graves are six feet deep; and, in the church, the coffin must be of lead. The clerk is entitled to _half_, and the sexton to about a _third_ more. A vault in the church is charged 21_l._, and in the church-yard 10_l._ 10_s._; with 5_l._ 5_s._ and 2_l._2_s._ respectively for each time of opening. To non-residents they are double.--I had scarcely finished this extract, when the clerk's or sexton's assistant made his appearance; and on the south side of the church-yard he brought me to the tomb of #Gainsborough#.

"Ah! friend," said I, "this is a hallowed spot--here lies one of Britain's favoured sons, whose genius has assisted in exalting her among the nations of the earth."--"Perhaps it was so," said the man, "but we know nothing about the people buried, except to keep up their monuments, if the family pay; and, perhaps, Sir, you belong to this family; if so, I'll tell you how much is due."--"Yes, truly, friend," said I, "I am one of the great family bound to preserve the monument of Gainsborough; but, if you take me for one of his relatives, you are mistaken."--"Perhaps, Sir, you may be of the family, but were not included in the Will, therefore are not obligated." I could not now avoid looking with scorn at the fellow; but, as the spot claimed better feelings, I gave him a trifle for his trouble, and mildly told him I would not detain him.

The monument being a plain one, and making no palpable appeal to vulgar admiration, was disregarded by these people; for it is in death as in life, if you would excite the notice of the multitude, you must in the grave have a splendid mausoleum, or in walking the streets you must wear fine clothes. It did not fall in the way of the untaught, on this otherwise polite spot, to know that they have among them the remains of #THE FIRST PAINTER OF OUR NATIONAL SCHOOL#, in fancy-pictures, and one #OF THE FIRST# in the classes of landscape and portrait;--a man who recommended himself as much by his superiority, as by his genius; as much by the mode in which his genius was developed, as by the perfection of his works; and as much by his amiable private character as by his eminence in the chief of Fancy's Arts. There is this difference between a poet and a painter--that the poet only exhibits the types of ideas in words, limited in their sense by his views, or his powers of expression; but the painter is called upon to exhibit the ideas themselves in a tangible shape, and made out in all their parts and most beautiful forms. The poet may write with a limited knowledge of his subject, and he may produce any partial view of it which his powers enable him to exhibit in a striking manner; but the successful painter must do all this, and he must execute with his hand as well as conceive with his mind. The poet, too, has the advantage of exhibiting his ideas in succession, and he avails himself of stops and pauses; but the great painter is obliged to set his entire subject before the eye at once, and all the parts of his composition, his imagination, and his execution, challenge the judgment as a whole. A great poet is nevertheless a just object of admiration among ordinary persons--but far more so a great painter, who assumes the power of creation, and of improving on the ordinary combinations of the Creator. Yet such a man was #Thomas Gainsborough#, before whose modest tomb I stood! The following are the words engraven on the stone:--

#Thomas Gainsborough#, esq. died August 2, 1788. Also the body of #Gainsborough Dupont#, esq. who died Jan. 20, 1797, aged 42 years. Also, Mrs. #Margaret Gainsborough#, wife of the above Thomas Gainsborough, esq, who died Dec. 17, 1798, in the 72d year of her age.

A little to the eastward lie the remains of another illustrious son of art, the modest #Zoffany#, whose Florence Gallery, Portraits of the Royal Family, and other pictures, will always raise him among the highest class of painters. He long resided on this Green, and, like Michael Angelo, Titian, and our own #West#, produced master-pieces at four-score. The words on the monument are:

Sacred to the Memory of #John Zoffany#, R.A. who died Nov. 11, 1810, aged 87 years.

It was a remarkable coincidence, that the bones of #Gainsborough# and #Zoffany# should thus, without premeditation, have been laid side by side; and that, but a few weeks before I paid my visit to this spot, delighted crowds had been daily drawn together to view their principal works, combined with those of #Wilson# and #Hogarth#, in forming an attractive metropolitan exhibition. On that occasion every Englishman felt proud of the native genius of our #Gainsborough#. It was ably opposed in one line by a #Wilson#, and in another by a #Zoffany#; yet the works of the untutored #Gainsborough# and #Hogarth# served to prove that every great artist must be born such; and that superiority in human works is the result of original aptitude, and cannot be produced by any servile routine of education, however specious, imposing, sedulous, or costly.

This valley of the Thames is, however, sanctified every-where by relics which call for equal reverence. But a mile distant on my right, in Chiswick Church-yard, lie the remains of the painting moralist #Hogarth#; who invented a universal character, or species of moral revelation, intelligible to every degree of intellect, in all ages and countries; who opened a path to the kindred genius of a #Burnett# and a #Wilkie#; and who conferred a deathless fame on the manners, habits, and chief characters of his time. And, but a mile on my left, in Richmond Church, lie the remains of #Thomson#, the poet of nature, of liberty, and of man--who displayed his powers only for noble purposes; who scorned, like the vile herd of modern rhymesters, to ascribe _glory_ to injustice, _heroism_ to the assassins of the champions of liberty, or _wisdom_ to the mischievous prejudices of weak princes; and who, by asserting in every line the moral dignity of his art, became an example of poetical renown, which has been ably followed by #Glover#, #Akenside#, #Cowper#, #Robinson#, #Burns#, #Barlow#, #Barbauld#, #Wolcot#, #Moore#, and #Byron#.

The fast-declining Sun, and my wearied limbs here reminded me that I was the slave of nature, and of nature's laws; and that I had neither time, nor power, to excurse or go farther. My course, therefore, necessarily terminated on this spot; and here I must take leave of the reader, who has been patient, or liberal enough, to accompany me.

For my own part, I had been highly gratified with the great volume, ten or twelve miles long, by two or three broad, in the study of which I had employed the lengthened morning; though this volume of my brief analysis the reader will doubtless find marked by the short-sightedness and imperfections which attend every attempt of human art to compress an infinite variety into a finite compass.

In looking back at the incidents of the day, which the language of custom has, with reference to our repasts, denominated #THE MORNING#, I could not avoid feeling the strong analogy which exists between such an excursion as that which I have here described and #THE LIFE of MAN#. Like that, and all things measured by #TIME# and #SPACE#, it had had its #BEGINNING#--its eventful #COURSE#--and its #END# determined by physical causes.

On emerging in the morning, I foresaw as little as the child foresees his future life, what were to be the incidents of my journey. I proceeded in each successive hour even as he proceeds in each year. I jostled no one, and no one disturbed me. My feelings were those of peace, and I suffered from no hostility. My inclinations were virtuous, and I have experienced the rewards of virtue. Every step had therefore been productive of satisfaction, and I had no-where had cause to look behind me with regret.

In this faithful journal, I have ventured to smile at folly; I have honestly reprehended bad passions, and I have sincerely sympathized with their victims. May all my readers be led to smile, reprehend, and sympathize with me; and I solicit this result--for their sakes--for the sake of truth--and in the hope that, if our feelings have been reciprocal, our mutual labours will not have been wasted! At the end of my short career, I conscientiously looked back on the incidents of my course with the complacency with which all may look back in old-age on the incidents of well-spent lives. Let no one sneer at the comparison, for, when human life has passed away, in what degree are its multiplied cares and chequered scenes more important than the simple events which attend a morning's walk? Look on the graves of that church-yard, and see in #THEM# the representations of hundreds of anxious lives! Are not those graves, then, said I, the end of thousands of busy cares and ambitious projects? Was not life the #MERE DREAM# of their now senseless tenants--like the trackless path of a bird in the air, or of a fish in the waters? Were they not #the Phantasmagoria# which, in their day, filled up the shifting scene of the world,--and are we not, in our several days, similar shadows, which modify the light for a season, and then disappear to make room for others like ourselves? May not the events of a morning which slides away, and leaves no traces behind it, be correctly likened therefore to the entire course of human life? The one, like the other, may be well or ill spent--idly dissipated or beneficially employed;--and the chequered incidents will be found to be similar to those which mark the periods of the longest life.

In conclusion, I cannot avoid wishing that my example may be followed, in other situations, by minds variously stored and directed by different inquiries. Like the day which has just been recorded, the incidents of every situation, and the thoughts which pass without intermission through every mind, would, in a similar portion of time, fill similar volumes, which, as indices of man's intellectual machinery, might serve the purpose of the dial of a clock, or the gnomon of a sun-dial, and prove agreeable sources of amusement, as well as efficacious means of disseminating valuable principles and useful instruction.

INDEX.

A.

Accumulation of property, its misery to all Admiralty, British, its characteristics Addington, Mr. his residence ----, political character Almanacks of prognostication, their prodigious sale Alfred the Great, his rare merits American Aloe, reflections on Anne Boleyn, her interview with Henry the Eighth Animal motion, economy of Ancestors, their number ascertained Ancestry, no ground of pride Anglican Church, its true foundation Ant-hill, like the British metropolis Antiquities, folly of the science so called Archbishops of Canterbury, their ancient residence Argument in behalf of poverty Aristocracy of trade characterized Arithmetic, its connexion with nature Articles of faith, necessity of revising Asparagus, its extensive cultivation Assembly, a subscription one described Astrology, its pretensions investigated Author, his feelings on concluding his Walk

B.

Barber, Alderman, his tomb and merit Battersea-bridge, reflections on its toll Ballot, choice by, its pernicious effect and erroneous principle Bakewell, Mr. his mode of riding Barnes Poor-house, libel on political economy ---- Common, its geological phenomena ---- Church-yard, reflections on Bastile Palace, at Kew Beggars, their habits and gains Bee-hive, its buzz that of a distant town Besborough, Lord, his seal Bells, abuse of them Blenkinsop's steam-engine, its convenient powers Black balls, a majority of, how produced Blair's Universal Preceptor, its merits Box-trees, ancient ones Botanic Garden, at Chelsea Bolingbroke, Lord, his house at Battersea ----, recollections of Book-clubs, a test of intellectual improvement Book of Nature, described British society, its radical diseases Brunell, Mr. his workshops Bramah, Mr. his ingenuity Britain, mistress of imperial Rome Buckingham House, notice of Burke, his bigotry Burial fees, account of

C.