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.
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