Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
When we came through Chiddingfold, the people were just going to church;
and we saw a carriage and pair conveying an old gentleman and some
ladies to the churchyard steps. Upon inquiry, we found that this was
Lord Winterton, whose name, they told us, was Turnour. I thought I had
heard of all the Lords, first or last; but, if I had ever heard of this
one before, I had forgotten him. He lives down in the Weald, between the
gunpowder establishments and Horsham, and has the reputation of being a
harmless, good sort of man, and that being the case I was sorry to see
that he appeared to be greatly afflicted with the gout, being obliged to
be helped up the steps by a stout man. However, it is as broad, perhaps,
as it is long: a man is not to have all the enjoyments of making the
gout, and the enjoyments of abstinence too: that would not be fair play;
and I dare say that Lord Winterton is just enough to be content with the
consequences of his enjoyments.
This Chiddingfold is a very pretty place. There is a very pretty and
extensive green opposite the church; and we were at the proper time of
the day to perceive that the modern system of education had by no means
overlooked this little village. We saw _the schools_ marching towards
the church in military order. Two of them passed us on our road. The
boys looked very hard at us, and I saluted them with "There's brave
boys, you'll all be parsons or lawyers or doctors." Another school
seemed to be in a less happy state. The scholars were too much in
uniform to have had their clothes purchased by their parents; and they
looked, besides, as if a little more victuals and a little less
education would have done as well. There were about twenty of them
without one single tinge of red in their whole twenty faces. In short I
never saw more deplorable looking objects since I was born. And can it
be of any use to expend money in this sort of way upon poor creatures
that have not half a bellyful of food? We had not breakfasted when we
passed them. We felt, at that moment, what hunger was. We had some bits
of bread and meat in our pockets, however; and these, which, were merely
intended as stay-stomachs, amounted, I dare say, to the allowance of
any half-dozen of these poor boys for the day. I could, with all my
heart, have pulled the victuals out of my pocket and given it to them;
but I did not like to do that which would have interrupted the march,
and might have been construed into a sort of insult. To quiet my
conscience, however, I gave a poor man that I met soon afterwards
sixpence, under pretence of rewarding him for telling me the way to
Thursley, which I knew as well as he, and which I had determined, in my
own mind, not to follow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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