He then saw against the Door twelve or so men by that light. They demanded of him six shillings, or they said they would have him by the scruff and wd threw him into the horse-pond, the bloody bugger, for they had empty bellies enough and so did their Children, & they had not a faggot between them to keep the winter off & to dry their cloathes. He then gave them a purse with the said amount. The Mob soon dispersed, after boasting to his presence that they had broke as many machines
determined on one matter: that we should establish our matrimonial footing on as firm a step as this country will hold — viz., not in London where the powder of ambitious lawyers chokes me in every thoroughfare, but in the calmer pond of some slumberous Country Town, where the bells ring with diffidence over the pompous, and the honest fellow can walk about without an eye ever turned for his rump. We will have a green patch and I shall return promptly for my lunch of kidneys, keeping time by the cathedral spire. If I can tie this up with as strong a ribbon as bundles these briefs for the Prosecution of said wretched Rioters — your father will have to find the sharpest of scissors likewise. If I am thwarted, and forced to breathe more of that pestilent air, I shall grow melancholy as those Greenlanders in Denmark — looking ever north, my dearest!
in Surley Row with my mother and my brother. I was awoken about five o’clock on Sunday the 21st of November last by a horn blowing. I did not get out of bed. I saw several persons at the house opposite and William Dart came to the window of our house and called to us that we must come out. He had on ribands as for the feast of Whitsun & said we must collect shillings & break the machines that do the men’s work. I put on my scarf & opened the Door. Old Becky Shail came out of her house with a basket of lardey for all, she said those d — d wretched gentlemen must catch it: she once had a husband hung & cut up in Reding. Giles Griffin said they shall by g — d. My brother was drawn out by the arm. We proceeded down Back Lane, pressing more persons. My brother tied his trousers in the Road for they gave us no time
but the Squire is the most insufferable of alclass="underline" he has ten pairs of tall boots that creak like a coach — & a temper attuned to the weather, that holds his sport in the cup of its hand — a tyranny he will not stand for, but with less elegance in his rhetoric than that famous senator to Vespasian. He brings me cups of warm Port of an evening, settles me before his blazing hearth, and proceeds to vie with the Labouring Classes I have endured all day for bluntness of interest and the complete omission of that essential quality of eloquence that once parted us from the barbarians as flesh of peach from its hairy stone. This is how our rustic gentlemen cross the Rubicon — not with theatre & dancing on the ship but only talk of yields, & the price of corn, & harness, & nags’ teeth — & if they grow witty it is like spinning a top with a flail — and if rude — nay not lente but quickly run, you horses of the night! Did I tell you that I knew his son at Winchester? I believe I gave him a welt or two, for he was Junior by three years — a pretty fellow, but a dullard of the first order. He is now in speculation from America
said we did not have number enough to break his machine. He said we did not deserve 2/6d a day for we were paltry fellows who could not turn a Plough without making wind. We left him without abuse because he had stood like a man. We said we would return and went to join the persons that were at Fogbourne. We staid in Fogbourne until one o’clock, breaking there three machines and an iron Plough, & a winnower was already broke by a farmer. We collected £6. We returned to Ulverton where we met the Mob in the Square & we broke the said Farmer Walters’ Machine. Then some of us, about fifty persons, went to the Kistle Cross (upon Furzecombe Down) for a meeting where many spoke as we were all one, and a man I do not know in a black hat & Cloak said as we mean to circulate the Gentlemen’s blood with the leave of God to make our own blood good. Then over the crest to Effley and beyond
while the Briefs grow into bundles but my hand is sagging — it droops like the houses here, that are all sunk into their mud as if they wish to depart whence they came: for the walls are nothing more than earth and straw, and the roofs likewise — veritable pigsties all — nay, the pigs have better accomodation, & their (meaning the pigs) sour vapours blow less sulphurously past one’s nostrils — tho’ the desire to expectorate it from one’s lungs be equal & said desire quite overcomes those venerable parental injunctions in both cases, alas. There is a noisome mill thankfully distant, & an exceedingly ivied church, & the odd Fine house — in a good red brick, but inhabited by species of country tradesmen only a glove’s thickness off those they revile for having hands chapped by their business. These men have daughters shut away like Proserpine in a gloom, awaiting God knows what release by a bachelor with means — once a year, it appears, they ascend to the House where they gaze upon grandiosity and aldermen in equal quantity. Vile is this place of strangled opportunities, and rough fellows not in the least chastened by our proper Oaths and bundles of Terms & brass Ink-pots! Our witnesses creep out from under stones & demand more shillings than we have right to give them — but I give them anyway. So the great weight of the Law descends like some dusty-wigged behemoth in a scarlet stagecoach too small for the ride, and I must look stern and patch up the springs & be forever running to keep up. The dreadful Squire has a plan to carve a Horse on the hillside. All flesh is grass (or in this instance, the reverse