Rides on Railways Part 14

LEAMINGTON, about two miles distant, may be reached by two turnpike roads and a pleasant footpath; the distance of all being about two miles.

Mineral waters, fashion, a clever physician, the Warwickshire hounds, the surplus capital of Birmingham, speculative builders, and excellent sanitary regulations have contributed to the rapid rise of this picturesque and fashionable watering-place; in what proportions it would be difficult to say.

The waters, which resemble mild Epsom salts, first brought the village into notice in 1794, although the existence of mineral springs at Leamington Priory had been recorded by Camden and Dugdale. In 1794 people drank harder than they do now, read less, played cards more, were altogether "faster," and had more need of purifying waters and pump-room amus.e.m.e.nts. A long war shut out our idlers from the Continent, and created an additional demand for our native mineral produce. At a later period the talents of Dr. Jephson attracted an army of invalids and would-be invalids; Sir Walter Scott's novels brought Kenilworth and Warwick Castle into fashion, just as Garrick, like a second Peter the Hermit, preached up a pilgrimage to Stratford-on- Avon. So land-jobbers and builders rushed to prepare tempting abodes for the armies of the sick, the sporting, and the romantic, who gathered round the springs.

Although the beautiful stone which has made Bath the queen of watering- places, was not to be had, the materials for Roman cement, then lately invented, were plentiful. With these aids the town authorities had the good sense to enforce cleanliness, and all manner of rules for making the streets fit for the lounging promenades of the well-dressed. Water-carts and brooms were kept in active employment; beggars and dust-heaps were under the eye of a vigilant police.

The result was, that at the expense of many ruined builders and speculators, Leamington grew from a pretty village into a fine town, peopled not only by invalids in the water-drinking season, and sportsmen in the winter season, but by a number of permanent residents of independent fortune, of all ranks between retired manufacturers and Irish peers. Attached to the manufacturing districts, it has become what Brighton is to the London Stock Exchange.

As hunting quarters, Leamington is convenient for men with few horses, as the meets are near and the railways convenient. An ill-natured opinion prevails that the scarlet coat is more worn there by fortune-hunters than fox-hunters, and that the tailor is a person of more importance with the majority of the field than the huntsman; but this story probably originates in the number of carriages full of pretty faces to be found at the cover sides round Leamington. The country cannot be compared with Northamptonshire or Leicestershire, or even Oxfordshire. The farmers are better sportsmen than agriculturists. Warwickshire landlords think more of the politics of their tenants, than of their intelligence or capital. Great improvements have, however, been effected within the last ten years, and we must not forget to mention that the Birmingham Agricultural and Poultry Show, which is the finest local exhibition in the kingdom, draws a great many of its exhibitors from this county.

Leamington, long without direct railway communication, is now wrapped up between the broad-gauge and the narrow-gauge, like a hare in a bottle-spit.

The opening of the line to Rugby affords a new short way to London. The population will henceforward increase at the expense of its gentility, but the police and sanitary arrangements before alluded to, will always make Leamington a favourite with invalids, hypochondriacs, and flaneurs.

The multiplicity of these railroads compels us to abandon the plan of describing, as we pa.s.s, the more celebrated towns, mansions, or castles, because it would be impossible to follow out such a zig-zag of topography. It is better to take it for granted that the traveller will stop at certain places, and from them make excursions to everything worth seeing in the neighbourhood.

In this manner, as Birmingham gave occasion for an examination into the leading manufactures, we presume that Leamington will be the best central encampment for a survey of everything within a circle of ten miles interesting to the Antiquarian, the Historian, the Artist, the Poet, the Agriculturist, and the happy beings who have a taste for all these pursuits.

The number of interesting places within an easy walk or drive of Leamington, forms one of its great advantages as a watering place.

Either on foot or in a carriage (and Leamington is extremely well provided with carriages for hire), Warwick Castle, or Stratford-on-Avon, or Guy's Cliff, and Kenilworth, or Stoneleigh Abbey, may be visited in the course of a day, or part of a day.

The detailed beauties of these places will be found fully set forth in county histories and local guides. A brief reference, sufficient to enable a traveller to make up a plan of campaign, will be all we shall attempt.

STONELEIGH ABBEY, the residence of Lord Leigh, is noticeable for its fine woodland scenery,--splendid oaks adorn the Park, and as having been the subject of a series of very extraordinary trials at the suit of claimants of the estate and ancient t.i.tle. The true heirs of this estate have never been discovered; many claimants have successively appeared, and endeavoured to prop up their claims by extraordinary fabrications of evidence. For instance, a certain tombstone, bearing inscriptions of great importance, was not only described and sworn to by a cloud of witnesses, as having been at a certain year in Stoneleigh Church, but other witnesses, with equal circ.u.mstantiality, related how, on a particular occasion, this said tombstone was taken down and destroyed. And yet, it was clearly proved before the House of Lords that no such tombstone ever existed.

The present family are now secure in the estates under the Statute of Limitations, but the late Peer, up to a short period before the old t.i.tle was revived in his favour, occupied Stoneleigh as a trustee, as it were, for want of a better claimant.

In the incidents of the Leigh Peerage, are the materials of half-a-dozen romances.

GUY'S CLIFF--where Guy, Earl of Warwick, and slayer of the Dun Cow, lived and died as a hermit, fed daily by his Countess, little knowing whom she fed--is situated on the banks of the Avon, about a mile from Warwick, on the high road to Kenilworth, and may also be approached by footpaths across the fields leading to the same village. The pictures of Guy's Cliff have been extravagantly praised, but the natural and artificial beauties of its gardens and pleasure grounds const.i.tute its chief attraction. For, says Dugdale, it is "a place of so great delight in respect to the river gliding below the rock, the dry wholesome situation, and the fair grove of lofty elms overshadowing it, that to one who desireth a retired life, either for his devotions or study, the like is hardly to be found."

What Dugdale said two hundred years ago may truly be repeated now, especially in a warm autumn or summer evening, when the click of a water-mill adds sound to the pleasure to be derived from the thick shade of the lofty trees overhead, mossy turf under the feet, and the sight of flowing water. Henry V. visited this hermitage; and Shakspeare, on what authority we know not, is said to have frequented it.

KENILWORTH follows Guy's Cliff, once a retired country village of one street, one church, and one inn, now vulgarized by being made the site of a railway station. At the risk of offending the Kenilworthians, we strongly advise the romantic youths and maidens inspired by Sir Walter Scott's romance not to visit the ruins, which, although an excellent excuse and pleasant situation for a picnic, have nothing romantic about them beyond grey walls. The woods and waters which formed so important a part of the scenery during Queen Elizabeth's visit, have disappeared, as well as all the stately buildings.

At the same time, imagination will go a long way, and it may not be a day ill spent after reading Laleham's "Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth," in which he describes what he himself saw when Queen Elizabeth visited the Earl of Leicester there in 1575, to journey over, especially if accompanied by a cold collation, including a salad of the Avon crawfish, and a little iced punch.

It would be still better for good pedestrians to walk the distance by the fields and push on to the inn for refreshment, without which all tame scenery is so very flat. In the sublimity of the Alps, the Pyrenees, or even the great Highland hills, a man may forget his dinner; but, when within the verge of the horizon church-towers and smoking chimneys of farm-houses continually occur, visions of fat, brown, sucking pigs, rashers of ham and boiled fowls, with foaming tankards, will intrude unbidden after an hour or two of contemplation.

STRATFORD ON AVON, with SHOTTERY, where Ann Hathaway was courted by Shakspeare and CHARLECOTE, the residence of the Sir Thomas Lucy whom the poet immortalised as Justice Shallow, are all within ten miles of Leamington. On all these so much has been written that we will not venture to "pile up the agony" any higher. The best companion on the road to Stratford is Charles Knight's Life of Shakspeare, which colours all the scenes of the poet's life in Warwickshire with the atmosphere of the sixteenth century, and summons to meet us in the streets of Stratford costumes and characters contemporary with Falstaff, Shallow, and Dogberry so well, that we do not see the Clods in corduroys, the commercial Gents in paletots, and the Police in trim blue, whom we really meet.

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SOHO.

WATT, BOULTON, MURDOCH.

On leaving Birmingham, the railway almost immediately pa.s.ses from Warwickshire into Staffordshire, through two parishes, Handsworth and Aston, which, presenting nothing picturesque in natural scenery or remarkable in ancient or modern buildings, with one exception, yet cannot be pa.s.sed over without notice, because they were residences of three remarkable men, to whom we are largely indebted for our use of the inventions which have most contributed to the civilisation and advance of social comfort in the nineteenth century.

Two miles from old Birmingham, now part of the modern town, lies Soho, in the suburb of Handsworth, which, in 1762, was a bleak and barren heath.

In that year Matthew Boulton, the son of a wealthy Birmingham hardwareman, purchased Soho, and erected on it a mansion, with pleasure grounds, and a series of workshops, for carrying on the then staple trades of the town, in shoe buckles, b.u.t.tons, and other articles included in the general t.i.tle of "toys." In 1774, Boulton entered into partnership with James Watt, and commenced, in concert with him, the experiments in which Watt had been for some years engaged for improving Savary's imperfect Steam-Pumping Engine.

After years of the concentrated labour of genius of the highest order, and the expenditure of not less than 47,000 pounds, their success was complete, and Watt's inventions, in the words of Lord Jeffrey, rendered the Steam Engine "capable of being applied to the finest and most delicate manufactures, and its power so increased, as to set weight and solidity at defiance. By his admirable contrivances, it became a thing stupendous alike for its force and its applicability, for the prodigious power it can exert, and the ease and precision, and ductility with which that power can be varied, distributed, and applied. The trunk of an elephant that can pick up a pin or rend an oak, is as nothing to it. It can engrave a seal, and crush ma.s.ses of obdurate metal like wax before it; draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer, and lift a ship of war like a bauble in the air.

It can embroider muslin, and forge anchors, cut steel into ribands, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and waves."

The march of death and time have removed all the men who were engaged in a.s.sisting James Watt and Matthew Boulton in their great works. The numerous mechanical trades in coining, plating, and other Birmingham manufactures, in addition to the construction of steam engines, which first turned the waste of Soho into the largest workshop in Europe, have pa.s.sed into other hands, and been transplanted. The manufactory of steam engines, removed to another site, still exists under the name of the old firm; but within a very recent period the pleasure grounds in which James Watt often walked, in earnest converse with the partner to whose energetic and appreciative mind he owed so much, have been invaded by the advances of the neighbouring town, and sliced and divided into building lots. Aston Hall and Park must soon suffer the same fate.

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Very soon there will be no vestiges of the homes of these great men, but they need no monuments, no shrines for the reverence of admiring pilgrims. Every manufactory in the town of Birmingham is a monument of the genius which first fully expanded within the precincts of Soho. Thousands on thousands find bread from inventions there first perfected or suggested.

When Watt explained to Smeaton, the architect of Eddystone Lighthouse and the greatest engineer of the day, the plan of his steam engine, he doubted whether mechanics could be found capable of executing the different parts with sufficient precision; and, in fact, in 1769, when Watt produced, under the patronage of Dr. Roebuck, his third model, with a cylinder of block tin eighteen inches in diameter, there were only one or two men capable of giving the requisite truth of workmanship to air-pump cylinders of two inches in diameter. At the present day, as before observed in reference to Wolverton, there are thousands of skilled workmen employed at weekly wages, to whom the most difficult problems of Watt's early experiments are familiar handiwork.

At Handsworth, too, working for a long life in the Soho manufactories as the servant, confidential a.s.sistant, and friend, lived another remarkable man, William Murdoch, the inventor of illumination by gas, and the author of the first locomotive steam engine, and of several important contributions to practical science, to which justice has scarcely been done.

William Murdoch employed coal gas so early as 1792, for the purpose of lighting his house and offices at Redruth, in Cornwall, when he was superintending the pumping engines erected there by Messrs. Boulton and Watt; for it was he who erected for them in that district the first Cornish pumping engine, with separate condenser. He had at that time in regular use a portable gas lantern, formed by filling a bladder with gas, and fixing to it a jet, which was attached to the bottom of a gla.s.s lantern, which he used for the purpose of lighting himself home at night across the moors from the mining engines.

His locomotive engine, made upon the non-condensing principle (since adopted in all engines for that purpose), was constructed, in consequence of a lameness which confined him to the sofa, and set to work at Redruth in 1784.

It is still in existence in perfect working order, and was exhibited before a meeting of the Mechanical Engineers at Birmingham, in the year 1850, when a memoir of Mr. Murdoch was read, which has been kindly forwarded to us by the President, John M'Connell, Esq., C.E.

It is among the traditions of Redruth, that one night William Murdoch, wishing to try an experiment with his new invention, lighted the lamp under the boiler, and set it a-going on a narrow, smooth, hard-rolled gravel walk leading to the church, a mile distant. The little engine went off at a great pace, whistling and hissing as it went, and the inventor followed as fast as he could in chase. Soon he heard cries of alarm, horror, despair, and came up to the worthy clergyman of the parish cowering up against the hedge, almost in a fainting fit, under a strong impression that it was the Evil One in person who just hissed past him in a fire-flaught.

Those of this generation who remember their first encounter with a locomotive in a dark night, can realize the terror of a country clergyman on encountering so strange an apparition in a night walk.

It speaks as highly for Messrs. Boulton and Watt, in whose service he pa.s.sed all the active years of his life, as for Mr. Murdoch, that on leaving Cornwall, he refused 1000 pounds a-year, which was offered him by the mining adventurers to remain in the county, in charge of the steam-pumping engines.

Liberal as the offer seems, it would have paid them well, for on his departure the engines lost twenty-five per cent. of their working power.

Handsworth Church, near Soho, contains a marble statue of James Watt, by Chantrey, a copy of that erected in Westminster Abbey.

The railway pa.s.ses Aston Hall, where James Watt and his only surviving son lived until his death a few years ago. The park contains some fine trees, and the house is a good specimen of the domestic architecture of the time of Elizabeth.

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It was sold for a trifling sum, with an imperfect t.i.tle, which time has cured, to a speculating banker; and, after having been let to the late James Watt on a long lease, is now likely to exchange mansion and park for a congeries of cottages in rows, forming forty-shilling freeholders.