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With a reported 8,000 people attending his funeral in 1835, William Cobbett (1763-1835) is remembered as one of the most vocal and committed champions of political reform in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. Returning to England in 1800 from self-imposed political exile, Cobbett was deeply shocked by the advances of the Industrial Revolution. The rural culture to which he was devoted was being destroyed and, a truly modern journalist, he suddenly desired 'to see the country, to see the farmers at home, and to see the labourers in the fields'. Cobbett rode through the towns and villages of England, giving voice to the plight of the oppressed labouring classes. His observations, first published in serial form between 1822 and 1826, were titled Rural Rides. They are an elegy to traditional agriculture, and one of the most extensive social commentaries ever published on agrarian life in the early nineteenth century.… (meer)
William Cobbett is a disagreeable character in some ways. He is a scold who rides his high horse, literally and figuratively, across early 19th century England. Unless you are really well up on the political controversies of the era, many of his shots will just whizz past your head. He suffered from an unpleasant anti-Semitism that he gives frequent vent to. He has an annoying habit of going into “I told you so” mode. And yet…Cobbett is one of the outstanding writers and appreciators of the English landscape, both wild and human-mediated, and I think he is an infinitely more interesting figure as a grumpy-lyrical artist than he would be as a purely lyrical one. It’s not everyone who can mix political vitriol with a sincere pleasure in a turnip harvest (and describe the latter so beautifully). Cobbett’s “Rural Rides,” which takes up two volumes and 642 closely printed pages in the old Everyman edition, deserves to be read and savored in full. ( )
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
This morning I set off, in rather a drizzling rain, from Kensington, on horse-back, accompanied by my son James, with an intention of going to UPHUSBAND, near ANDOVER, which is situated in the North West corner of Hampshire.
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Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
[between Redbourn and Hemel Hempstead, 1822] The custom in this part of Hertfordshire is to leave a BORDER round the ploughed part of the fields to bear grass and make hay from, so that, the grass now being made into hay, every corn field has a closely mown grass walk about ten feet wide all round it, between the corn and the hedge. This is most beautiful! The hedges are now full of the shepherd's rose, honeysuckle, and all sorts of wild flowers, so that you are upon a grass walk, with this most beautiful of all flower gardens on your one hand, and with the corn on the other ... Talk of PLEASURE-GROUNDS indeed! What, that ever man invented, can equal these fields in Hertfordshire?
Whitchurch is a small town, but famous for being the place where the paper has been made for the Bourough-Bank! I passed by the mill on my way o get out upon the Downs ... I hope the time will come, when a monument will be erected where that mill stands, and when on that monument will be inscribed THE CURSE OF ENGLAND. This spot ought to be held accursed in all time henceforth and for evermore. It has been the spot from which have sprung more and greater mischiefs than ever plagued mankind before. However ... one beholds this scene of paper-making with a less degree of rage than formerly.
This valley [Chilworth] has a run of water which comes out of the high hills ... This valley, which seems to have been created by a bountiful providence, as one of the choicest retreats of man; which seems formed for a scene of innocence and happiness, has been, by ungrateful man, so perverted as to make it instrumental in effecting two of the most damnable of purposes; in carrying into execution two of the most damnable inventions that ever sprang from the minds of man under the influence of the devil! namely, the making of gunpowder and of bank-notes! Here, in this tranquil spot ... here has the devil fixed on as one of the seats of his grand manufactory ... but, the Bank-notes! To think that the springs which God has commanded to flow from the sides of these happy hills, ... should be perverted into means of spreading misery over a whole nation ... One circumstance served to mitigate the melancholy excited by these reflections; namely, that a part of these springs have, at times, assisted in turning rags into Registers!
Through Whitchurch runs that stream which turns the mill of Squire Portal, and which mill makes the Bank of England Note-Paper! Talk of the Thames and the Hudson, with their forests of masts; talk of the Nile and the Delaware, bearing the food of millions on their bosoms; Talk of the Ganges and the Mississippi ... what are all these rivers put together, compared with the river of Whitchurch ... This river, by merely turning a wheel, which wheel sets some rag-tearers and grinders and washers and re-compressers in motion, has produced a greater effect on the condition of men, than ... all the other rivers, all the seas, ... in the world.... The product of the little sedgy rivulet of Whitchurch has ... caused greater changes as to property than has been caused by all other things put together in the long course of seven centuries.
A friend has lent me a very old map of Wiltshire ... I laid a piece of very thin paper upon the map, and thus traced the river upon my paper.
With a reported 8,000 people attending his funeral in 1835, William Cobbett (1763-1835) is remembered as one of the most vocal and committed champions of political reform in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. Returning to England in 1800 from self-imposed political exile, Cobbett was deeply shocked by the advances of the Industrial Revolution. The rural culture to which he was devoted was being destroyed and, a truly modern journalist, he suddenly desired 'to see the country, to see the farmers at home, and to see the labourers in the fields'. Cobbett rode through the towns and villages of England, giving voice to the plight of the oppressed labouring classes. His observations, first published in serial form between 1822 and 1826, were titled Rural Rides. They are an elegy to traditional agriculture, and one of the most extensive social commentaries ever published on agrarian life in the early nineteenth century.
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