And This Was November The
Second, The Very Day Eighty-Odd Years Ago When He Paid His
First Visit To The Rookery; At All Events, It Is The First
Date He Gives In Rural Rides.
And he too had been delighted
with the place and the beauty of the surrounding country with
the trees in their late autumn colours.
Writing on November
2nd, 1821, he says: "The place is commonly called Uphusband,
which is, I think, as decent a corruption of names as one
could wish to meet with. However, Uphusband the people will
have it, and Uphusband it shall be for me." That is indeed
how he names it all through his book, after explaining that
"husband" is a corruption of Hurstbourne, and that there are
two Hurstbournes, this being the upper one.
I congratulated myself on having been refused accommodation at
the "George and Dragon," and was more than satisfied to pass
an evening without a book, sitting there alone listening to an
imaginary conversation between those two curious friends.
"Lord Carnarvon," says Cobbett, "told a man, in 1820, that he
did not like my politics. But what did he mean by my
politics? I have no politics but such as he ought to like.
To be sure I labour most assiduously to destroy a system of
distress and misery; but is that any reason why a Lord should
dislike my politics? However, dislike them or like them, to
them, to those very politics, the Lords themselves must come
at last."
Undoubtedly he talked like that, just as he wrote and as he
spoke in public, his style, if style it can be called, being
the most simple, direct, and colloquial ever written.
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