I Packed Up My Little Family In A Hired Coach, And Attended By My
Trusty Servant, Who Had Lived With
Me a dozen of years, and now
refused to leave me, took the road to Dover, in my way to
The
South of France, where I hoped the mildness of the climate would
prove favourable to the weak state of my lungs.
You advised me to have recourse again to the Bath waters, from
the use of which I had received great benefit the preceding
winter: but I had many inducements to leave England. My wife
earnestly begged I would convey her from a country where every
object served to nourish her grief: I was in hopes that a
succession of new scenes would engage her attention, and
gradually call off her mind from a series of painful reflections;
and I imagined the change of air, and a journey of near a
thousand miles, would have a happy effect upon my own
constitution. But, as the summer was already advanced, and the
heat too excessive for travelling in warm climates, I proposed
staying at Boulogne till the beginning of autumn, and in the mean
time to bathe in the sea, with a view to strengthen and prepare
my body for the fatigues of such a long journey.
A man who travels with a family of five persons, must lay his
account with a number of mortifications; and some of these I have
already happily overcome. Though I was well acquainted with the
road to Dover, and made allowances accordingly, I could not help
being chagrined at the bad accommodation and impudent imposition
to which I was exposed. These I found the more disagreeable, as
we were detained a day extraordinary on the road, in consequence
of my wife's being indisposed.
I need not tell you this is the worst road in England with
respect to the conveniences of travelling, and must certainly
impress foreigners with an unfavourable opinion of the nation in
general. The chambers are in general cold and comfortless, the
beds paultry, the cookery execrable, the wine poison, the
attendance bad, the publicans insolent, and the bills extortion;
there is not a drop of tolerable malt liquor to be had from
London to Dover.
Every landlord and every waiter harangued upon the knavery of a
publican in Canterbury, who had charged the French ambassador
forty pounds for a supper that was not worth forty shillings.
They talked much of honesty and conscience; but when they
produced their own bills, they appeared to be all of the same
family and complexion. If it was a reproach upon the English
nation, that an innkeeper should pillage strangers at that rate;
it is a greater scandal, that the same fellow should be able to
keep his house still open. I own, I think it would be for the
honour of the kingdom to reform the abuses of this road; and in
particular to improve the avenue to London by the way of Kent-Street,
which is a most disgraceful entrance to such an opulent
city.
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