XIX. A GERMAN IN ENGLAND
WHEN, in 1768, the yet undistinguished the world his 'Journal of a Tour to Corsica,' Gray wrote to Horace Walpole from Pembroke College that the book had strangely pleased and moved him. Then, with the curious contempt for the author which that egregious personage seems to have inspired in so many of his contemporaries, Gray goes on: 'The pamphlet proves what I have always maintained, that any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity.' This is an utterance which suggests that sometimes even the excellent critic Mr. Gray, like the Sage of Gough Square, 'talked James Boswell of Auchinleck gave to laxly.' At all events this particular example scarcely illustrates his position. There was more than mere veracity in Boswell's method. Conscious or unconscious, his faculty for reproducing his impressions effectively, and his thoroughly individual treatment of his material, are far more nearly akin to genius than folly. Nor could his success be said to be a matter of chance, since on two subsequent occasions – in the 'Tour to the Hebrides' and the 'Life of Johnson' – he not only repeated that success, but carried further towards perfection those fortunate characteristics which he had exhibited at first. Walpole, if we may trust the title-page of the 'little lounging miscellany' known as 'Walpoliana,' reported his friend's dictum with greater moderation. 'Mr. Gray the poet has often observed to me, that, if any person were to form a Book of what he had seen and heard himself, it must, in whatever hands, prove a most useful and entertaining one.' As a generalisation, this leaves nothing to be desired. That the unaffected record of ordinary experiences, 'honestly set down,' is seldom without its distinctive charm, needs no demonstration; and when lapse of time has added its grace of remoteness, the charm is heightened. These considerations must serve as our excuse for recalling a half-forgotten 'pamphlet' – as Gray would have styled it – which points the moral of his amended aphorism far better than Boswell's 'Tour.'
The narrative of Charles P. Moritz's 'Travels, chiefly on Foot, through several Parts of England,' belongs to 1782. It was first published at Berlin in 1783, and the earliest English version is dated 1795. The second edition (now before us) came two years later, and other issues are occasionally met with in booksellers' catalogues; besides which, John Pinkerton, the compiler of the 'Walpoliana' above mentioned, included the book in the second volume of his 'Collections of Voyages,' et.c., and Mayor also reprinted it in vol. ix. of his 'British Tourist.' 38
The English translator was a 'very young lady,' said to be the daughter of an unidentified personage referred to by the author: the editor, who, in a copious preface, testifies, among other things, to the favourable reception of the work in Berlin and Germany generally, remains anonymous. Moritz himself, the writer of the volume, was a young Prussian clergyman, enthusiastic about England and things English, who came among us 'to draw Miltonic air' (in Gay's phrase), and to read his beloved 'Paradise Lost' in the very land of its conception. He stayed exactly seven weeks in this country, three of which he spent in London, the rest being occupied by visits to Oxford, Birmingham, the Peak, and elsewhere. What he sees, and what he admires (and luckily for us he admires a great deal), he describes in letters to one Frederic Gedike, a professorial friend at Berlin.
His first communication, dated 31st May, depicts his progress up the Thames, which he regards as greatly surpassing even 'the charming banks of the Elbe.' Then he disembarks near Hartford, whence, with two companions, he posts to London, behind a round-hatted postilion 'with a nosegay in his bosom.' He is delighted with the first view he gets of an English soldier, 'in his red uniform, his hair cut short and combed back on his forehead, so as to afford a full view of his fine broad manly face.' He is interested also to see two boys engaged in the national pastime of boxing; and he marvels at the huge gateway-like sign-posts of the village inns. Passing over Westminster Bridge, he does not, like Wordsworth, burst into a sonnet, but he is impressed (as who would not be!) by that unequalled coup d'oil. 'The prospect from this bridge alone,' he says, 'seems to afford one the epitome of a journey, or a voyage in miniature, as containing something of everything that most usually occurs on a journey.' Presently, a little awed by the prodigious greatness and gloom of the houses (which remind him of Leipzig), he takes lodgings in George Street, Strand, with a tailor's widow, not very far, as he is pleased to discover, from that Adelphi Terrace where once 'lived the renowned Garrick.' To his simple tastes his apartments, with their leather-covered chairs, carpeted floors and mahogany tables, have an air of splendour. 'I may do just as I please,' he says, 'and keep my own tea, coffee, bread and butter, for which purpose [and here comes a charming touch of guilelessness!] my landlady has given me a cupboard in my room, which locks up.' With one of his landlady's sons for guide, he makes the tour of St. James's Park (where you may buy milk warm from the cow), and he experiences for the first time 'the exquisite pleasure of mixing freely with a concourse of people, who are for the most part well dressed and handsome.' His optimism finds a further gratification in the 'sweet security' (the expression is not his, but Lamb's) which is afforded 'from the prodigious crowd of carts and coaches,' by the footways on either side of the streets; and he explains to his 'dearest Gedike' the mysteries of giving the wall. He thinks London better lighted than Berlin (which implies little short of Cimmerian darkness in that centre of civilization!), and he waxes sorrowful over the general evidence of dram-drinking and the sale of spirituous liquors. 'In the late riots [i.e. the Gordon Riots of 1780], which even yet are hardly quite subsided, and which are still the general topic of conversation, more people have been found dead near empty brandy-casks in the streets, than were killed by the musket-balls of regiments, that were called in.'
Another thing which strikes him as foreign to his experience is the insensibility of the crowd to funerals. 'The people seem to pay as little attention to such a procession, as if a hay-cart were driving past.' Among more pleasurable novelties, are the English custom of sleeping without an eiderdown, and the insular institution of 'buttered toast,' which, incredible as it may sound, appears to have been still an unknown luxury in the land of Werther. 39
On the second Sunday after his arrival he preaches at the German Church on Ludgate Hill for the pastor, the Rev. Mr. Wendeborn, who resides 'in a philosophical, but not unimproving retirement' at chambers in New Inn, – and he visits the Prussian Ambassador, Count Lucy, with whom, over a 'dish of coffee,' he has a learned argument upon the pending dispute 'about the tacismus or stacismus.' Then he pays à visit to Vauxhall. Comparing great things with small, he straightway traces certain superficial resemblances between the Surrey Paradise and the similar resort at Berlin, – resemblances' which are enforced by his speedy discovery of that chiefest glory of the English gardens, Roubiliac's statue of Handel. The Gothic orchestra, and the painted ruin's at the end of the walks (sometimes used by flippant playwrights as similes for beauty in decay) also come in for a share of his admiration; and he is particularly impressed by Hayman's pictures in the Rotunda. 'You here,' he adds, speaking of this last, 'find the busts of the best English authors, placed all round on the sides.
Thus a Briton again meets with his Shakespeare, Locke, Milton, and Dryden in the public places of his amusements; and there also reveres their memory.' He finds further confirmation of this honoured position of letters in the popularity of the native classics as compared with those of Germany, 'which in general are read only by the learned; or, at most, by the middle class of people. The English national authors are in all hands, and read by all people, of which the innumerable editions they have gone through, are a sufficient proof.' In Germany 'since Gellert [of the Fables], there has as yet been no poet's name familiar to the people.' But in England even his landlady studies her 'Paradise Lost,' and indeed by her own account won the affections of her husband (now deceased) 'because she read Milton with such proper emphasis:'
Another institution that delights him is the second-hand bookseller, at whose movable stall you may buy odd volumes 'so low as a penny; nay, even sometimes for an half-penny a piece.' Of one of these 'itinerant antiquaries' he buys the 'Vicar of Wakefield' in two volumes for sixpence.
After Vauxhall follows, as a matter of course, a visit to the equally popular Ranelagh. Like most people, the traveller had expected it to resemble its rival, and until he actually entered the Great Room, was grievously disappointed. 'But,' he continues, 'it is impossible to describe, or indeed to conceive, the effect it had on me, when, coming out of the gloom of the garden, I suddenly entered a round building, illuminated by many hundred lamps, the splendour and beauty of which surpassed everything of the kind I had ever seen before. Everything seemed here to be round; above, there was a gallery, divided into boxes, and in one part of it an organ with a beautiful choir, from which issued both instrumental and vocal music. All around, under this gallery, are handsome painted boxes for those who wish to take refreshments. The floor was covered with mats; in the middle of which are four high black pillars, within which are neat fire-places for preparing tea, coffee, and punch; and all around also there are placed tables, set out with all kinds of refreshments. Within [he means 'without'] these four pillars, in a kind of magic rotundo, all the beau-monde of London move perpetually round and round.' This, as may be seen by a glance at Parr's print of 1751 after Canaletto, or the better-known plate in Stowe's 'Survey' of 1754, is a fairly faithful description of the Ranelagh of Walpole and Chesterfield. After a modest consommation, which, to his astonishment, he finds is covered by the half-crown he paid at the door, he mounts to the upper regions. 'I now went up into the gallery, and seated myself in one of the boxes there: and from thence, becoming, all at once, a grave and moralizing spectator, I looked down on the concourse of people who were still moving round and round in the fairy circle; and then I could easily distinguish several stars, and other orders of knighthood; French queues and bags contrasted with plain English heads of hair, or professional wigs; old age and youth, nobility and commonalty, all passing each other in the motley swarm. An Englishman who joined me, during this my reverie, pointed out to me, on my inquiring, princes, and lords with their dazzling stars; with which they eclipsed the less brilliant part of the company.' His next experiences are Of the House of Commons. Here he had like to have been disappointed from his unhappy ignorance of an enlightened native formula. Having made his way to Westminster Hall, a 'very genteel man in black' informed him he must be introduced by a member, an announcement which caused him to retire 'much chagrined.' Something unintelligible was mumbled behind him about a bottle of wine, but it fell on alien ears. As soon as he returned home, his intelligent landlady solved the difficulty, sending him back next day with the needful douceur, upon which the 'genteel man,' with much venal urbanity, handed him into a select seat in the Strangers' Gallery. The building itself strikes him as rather mean, and not a little resembling a chapel. But the Speaker and the mace; the members going and coming, some cracking nuts and eating oranges, others in their greatcoats and with boots and spurs; the cries of 'Hear,' and 'Order,' and 'Question,' speedily absorb him. On his first visit he is fortunate. The debate turns on the reward to Admiral Rodney for his victory over De Grasse at Guadaloupe, and he hears Fox, Burke, and Rigby speak. 'This same celebrated Charles Fox,' he says, 'is a short, fat, and gross man, with a swarthy complexion, and dark; and in general he is badly dressed. There certainly is something Jewish in his looks. But upon the whole, he is not an ill-made nor an ill-looking man: and there are many strong marks of sagacity and fire in his eyes… Burke is a well-made, tall, upright man, but looks elderly and broken. Rigby is excessively corpulent, and has a jolly rubicund face.'
Pastor Moritz repeated his visits to the Parliament House, frankly confessing that he preferred this entertainment to most others; and, indeed, it was a shilling cheaper than the pit of a theatre. When, after his tour in the country, he came back to London, he seems at once to have gravitated to Westminster, for he gives an account of the discussion on the Barré pension which followed the death of Lord Rockingham in July. He heard Fox, with great eloquence, vindicate his resignation; he heard Horace Walpole's friend, General Conway; he heard Burke, in a passion, insisting upon the respect of the house; he heard the youthful Pitt, then scarcely looking more than one-and-twenty, rivet universal attention. A little earlier he had been privileged to witness that most English of sights, the Westminster election in Covent Garden, with its boisterous finale. 'When the whole was over, the rampant spirit of liberty, and the wild impatience of a genuine English mob, were exhibited in perfection. In a very few minutes the whole scaffolding, benches, and chairs, and everything else, was completely destroyed; and the mat with which it had been covered torn into ten thousand long strips or pieces, or strings; with which they encircled or inclosed multitudes of people of all ranks. These they hurried along with them, and everything else that came in their way, as trophies of joy; and thus, in the midst of exultation and triumph, they paraded through many of the most populous streets of London.'
To the British Museum he paid a flying visit of little more than an hour, with a miscellaneous and 'personally conducted' party, – a visit scarcely favourable to minute impressions. But of the Haymarket Theatre, to which he went twice (Covent Garden and Drury Lane being closed as usual for the summer months), he gives a fairly detailed account. Foote's 'Nabob' was the play on the first night; that on the second, the 'English Merchant,' adapted by the elder Colman from the 'Ecossaise' of Voltaire. With this latter he was already familiar in its German dress, having seen it at Hamburg. On both occasions the performance wound up with O'Keeffe's once-famous ballad farce of 'The Agreeable Surprise.' That excellent bur-letta singer, John Edwin, took the part of 'Lingo' the schoolmaster (which he had created), 40 to the entire satisfaction of Moritz, who thought him, with his 'Amo, amas, I love a lass,' etc., and his musical voice, 'one of the best actors of all that he had seen,' notwithstanding that Jack Palmer (Lamb and Goldsmith's Palmer!) acted the Nabob.
But if he was pleased with the acting, he was not equally impressed by the audience. The ceaseless clamour of the upper gallery and the steady hail of missiles were anything but agreeable. 'Often and often whilst I sat here [i.e. in the pit], did a rotten orange, or pieces of the peel of an orange, fly past me, or past some of my neighbours, and once one of them actually hit my hat, without my daring to look round, for fear another might then hit me on my face.' Another passage connected with this part of the entertainment illustrates the old fashion of sending the lackeys to keep their masters' places: 'In the boxes, quite in a corner, sat several servants, who were said to be placed there, to keep the seats for the families they served, till they should arrive; they seemed to sit remarkably close and still, the reason of which, I was told, was their apprehension of being pelted, for, if one of them dares but to look out of the box, he is immediately saluted with a shower of orange peel from the gallery.'
Over the descriptions of St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey we must pass silently, in order to accompany the tourist on his road to Derbyshire, to the 'natural curiosities' of which, after some hesitation, he felt himself most at tracted. Equipped with a road-book, he set out by stage-coach from the White Hart (in the Strand) for Richmond, intending thence to pursue his journey on foot. According to his own account, he must have travelled in just such' another vehicle as that depicted in Hogarth's 'Country Inn-Yard,' and have shared the curiosity, so often felt by admirers of that veracious picture, and afterwards amply gratified in his own case, as to the method by which passengers managed to 'fasten themselves securely on the roof.' Luckily the coach met neither highwayman nor footpad. At Richmond he alighted, and is properly enthusiastic, almost dithyrambic, over 'one of the first situations in the world.' He even got up to see the sun rise from Richmond Hill, with the usual fate of such premature adventurers, a clouded sky. Then he set out on foot by Windsor to Oxford. But he speedily discovered that, in a horse-riding age, a pedestrian was a person of very inferior respectability; and though – modelling himself upon the Vicar of Wakefield – he was careful to invite the landlords to drink with him, he found himself generally treated with pity or contempt, which, when he sat down under a hedge to read Milton, almost changed into a doubt of his sanity. At most of the inns they declined to give him house-room, though, finally, he was allowed to enter 'one of those kitchens which I had so often read of in Fielding's fine novels,' where, just as in those novels, presently arrives a showy post-chaise to set the servile establishment in a bustle, although the occupants called for nothing but two pots of beer. After a vain attempt to obtain a night's lodging at Nuneham, he picks up a travelling companion in the shape of a young parson, who had been preaching at Dorchester and was returning to Oxford. His new ally takes him to the time-honoured Mitre, where he finds a great number of clergymen, all with their gowns and bands on, sitting round a large table, each with his pot of beer before him.' A not very edifying theological discussion ensues, which is too long to quote, and poor Parson Moritz is so well entertained that he has a splitting headache next morning. His further fortunes cannot be detailed here. From Oxford he goes to Stratford-on-Avon, then to Lichfield and Derby, and so to his destination, 'the great cavern near Castleton, in the high Peake of Derbyshire,' which he describes at length. He returns by Nottingham and Leicester, whence, still enthusiastic, but a little weary of his humiliations on foot, he takes coach to Northampton, mounting to the top, in company with a farmer, a young man and 'a black-a-moor.' This eminence proving as perilous as it looked, he creeps into the basket, in spite of the warnings of the black. 'As long as we went up hill, it was easy and pleasant. And, having had little or no sleep the night before, I was almost asleep among the trunks and the packages; but how was the case altered when we came to go down hill; then all the trunks and parcels began, as it were, to dance around me, and everything in the basket seemed to be alive; and I every moment received from them such violent blows, that I thought my last hour was come. I now found that what the black had told me was no exaggeration; but all my complaints were useless. I was obliged to suffer this torture nearly an hour, till we came to another hill again, when, quite shaken to pieces and sadly bruised, I again crept to the top of the coach, and took possession of my former seat.' No wonder he concludes his part of his experiences with a solemn warning to travellers to take inside places in English post coaches. With his return to London his narrative practically ends. But the rapid sketch here given of it affords no sufficient hint of the abundance of naïf detail, of simple enthusiasm and kindly wonderment, which characterize its pages. To complete the impression given, we should be able to suppose the writer resting contentedly from a solitary literary effort, and ending tranquil days as a kind of German Dr. Primrose, telling grandchildren, such as Chodowiecki drew, how he once saw Goldsmith's monument in the great Abbey by the Thames, and heard Pitt speak in the Parliament House at Westminster. But this is to reckon without the all-recording pages of the 'Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie,' and that harsh resolvent, Fact. For the future of Pastor Charles P. Moritz was not at all in this wise. Besides his letters to his 'dearest Gedike,' he wrote many other works, including a 'psychological romance' and 'Travels in Italy;' became a Fine-Art Professor; married late in life, but not happily; left no family; and, last of all, had been dead two years when the translation which has formed the subject of these pages was first introduced to English readers.