If the traveller wishes to stay at a hotel in the Tyneside area those in Gateshead are ‘hardly to be recommended: sleep at Newcastle’. The same remark is made regarding Jarrow.
As for the industrial workers, they are ‘now comparatively sober, and very peaceable, but very immoral, as is attested by the large proportion of illegitimate children. This is partly owing to the barbarous nature of their courtships, but more so to the infamous condition of their cottages, large families being crowded together into little cottages of a single room, by which overcrowding all natural sentiments of modesty are sapped. Among the great faults of the inhabitants are suspicion and an utter inability to forgive. They brood over an insult for years, and over wrongs that are quite imaginary. On the other hand, they are as firm friends as they are unforgiving enemies. Kind-hearted and charitable, their hospitality is simply patriarchal. In every house you are offered bread, cake, cheese, whisky, or milk, according to the means of the owner. From constant intermarrying there is a good deal of tendency to madness among the people.’
The lead miners are considered to be rather special, much influenced by the barren and secluded moorlands in which they live, ‘but beneath a rough exterior they have great kindness of heart and much natural intelligence. There is little poverty among them, for the lead miner, who works only 8 hrs. a day, and works only 5 days in the week, obtains from 15s. to 20s., and as a rule they have small plots of ground to assist in their maintenance. There is little intemperance; but bastardy is still very rife, though generally followed by marriage. Excellent schools have been built, and a library for the use of miners has been opened at Newhouse. In the books chosen from the latter, the great popularity of mathematics is evident. The miners of Coal-cleugh have published a selection of poems, and four of them conjointly have written a pamphlet illustrating the benefit to be derived from well-conducted Friendly Societies.’
Nevertheless, regarding the County of Durham’s ancient customs: ‘There is a general belief that bread baked on Good Friday is a cure for most disorders. Waifs or waffs of dying persons are seen by their neighbours, and many persons even see their own waifs. Garlands are occasionally carried before the coffins of virgins. Salt is placed upon a corpse after death, and is supposed to prevent the body from swelling; and the looking-glass in the death-chamber is covered with white, from fear of the spirits which might be reflected in it. The straw used to be taken out of the bed in which a person had died, and burnt in front of the house; then search was made in the ashes for a footprint, which would be found to correspond with the foot of the person to whom the summons would come next.’
The most noticeable characteristic of the middle and eastern parts of the country is its dirt, ‘for the smoke of the collieries, which envelops these parts, injures vegetation, scatters black ashes over the fields, and hangs in a thick cloud overhead’. We are told of a terrible accident at Heaton Main Colliery on 30 April 1815. ‘There were 95 persons in the pit: 30 escaped on the first alarm, but 41 men and 34 boys perished. Of these 56 had gained a point which was not reached by the water, and perished from want of air. Their corpses were found within a space of 30 yards of each other; their positions and altitudes were various; several appeared to have fallen forwards from off an inequality, or rather step, in the coal on which they had been sitting; others, from their hands being clasped together, seemed to have expired while addressing themselves to the protection of the Deity; two, who were recognised as brothers, had died in the act of taking a last farewell by grasping each other’s hand; and one poor little boy reposed in his father’s arms.’
We will end our visit to the area on a less pathetic note, on reading that the villages belonging to the Duke of Northumberland had had almost all their cottages rebuilt within the last few years. ‘The village of Denwick is perhaps one of the best examples of the improved condition of labourers’ dwelling-houses. The inhabitants, however, still cling to their ancient customs of sleeping in box-beds, which occupy one wall of the common sitting-room, being generally placed opposite the fire, for the sake of warmth, and being closed all day by shutters, which are opened at night. It is still almost impossible to persuade a Northumbrian peasant to do anything so “uncanny” as sleeping upstairs. The dwellings have generally a great appearance of prosperity and plenty, which is obtained as much from abundance and cheapness of coals as from the high rate of wages. The chief peculiarity of dress among the peasantry is the high buckled shoe, which is almost universally worn by the women and children.’
The traveller to Westmorland and Cumberland could supplement his Murray with Wordsworth’s Guide Through the District of the Lakes in the North of England, with a Description of the Scenery, &c. For the Use of Tourists and Residents, using the fifth edition of 1835: ‘In human life there are moments worth ages. In a more subdued tone of sympathy we may affirm, that in the climate of England there are, for the lover of nature, days which are worth whole months, — I might say — even years.’
Such a guidebook emphasizes pedestrianism as the ideal (and expected) mode of locomotion, for then the traveller is able to see everything, and has time to reflect on what scenery he passes through. The often idiosyncratic style provides a calm and healing read while catching breath among the Fells, or after a hunger-slaking meal by the fireside of inn or hotel in the evening. It is not a guide in the Baedeker or even the Murray sense, for Wordsworth was too singular for that, and in any case he would have despised guidebooks which brought the undiscriminating horde to his favourite haunts. He sees the landscape with the eye of a poetic geographer, to whom the coming of the railway was little short of an assault on his soul. His guide awakens one to subtle combinations of sky and landscape, predating Ruskin’s monograph Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century — a classic of meteorological description.
The author of A. & C. Black’s later guide, however, attempts to put Wordsworth in his place. ‘Till about the middle of the eighteenth century, indeed, the rest of England took much the same Philistine view of Lakeland. Mountains in those days meant bad roads, poor inns or none, the fear of robbers, and the chance of losing one’s way. But it is a mistake that, as commonly supposed, Wordsworth and Southey made the Lakes, from the tourist point of view. An older admirer, one of the first who taught our prosaic forefathers to look for less tame models of the picturesque, was the poet Gray. The journal of his tour may still be read with interest and amusement. One well-known guide-book was fifty years old when Wordsworth wrote his hand-book; and both he and Southey complain of the crowds of holiday “Lakers” who every summer invaded Grasmere and Keswick.’
Another Victorian guidebook to the Lakes was that of Harriet Martineau, who lived in the area after 1850. She is more down to earth and systematic, though writes for a somewhat simpler traveller than either Murray or Wordsworth: ‘There is one thing more the stranger must do before he goes into Cumberland. He must spend a day on the Mountains: and if alone, so much the better. If he knows what it is to spend a day so far above the every-day world, (unless there is danger in the case); and, if he is a novice, let him try whether it be not so. Let him go forth early, with a stout stick in his hand, provision for the day in his knapsack or his pocket; and, if he chooses, a book: but we do not think he will read today. A map is essential, to explain to him what he sees: and it is very well to have a pocket compass, in case of sudden fog, or any awkward doubt about the way. In case of an ascent of a formidable mountain, like Scawfell or Helvellyn, it is rash to go without a guide: but our tourist shall undertake something more moderate, and reasonably safe, for a beginning.’